Steve Vladeck: Setting the Record Straight on the Anti-Trump Injunctions

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https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/136-setting-the-record-straight-on

The One First “Long Read”: Straightening the Record on Anti-Trump Rulings

Before turning to the data that my superstar research assistant Alyssa Negvesky and I collected (and Alyssa collated), a note on our methodology: Our specific focus is not on every lawsuit filed against the federal government in the last 10 weeks. Rather, it is on the subset of cases in which there has been a request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) or a preliminary injunction (PI) against a policy undertaken or proposed by the Trump administration since January 20, 2025. There are plenty of cases against the government either (1) relating to pre-January 20 policies; or (2) not seeking this kind of interim relief. But insofar as the public criticisms are about the unprecedented flurry of TROs and PIs, it seems worth focusing on this subset.

Within that framing, we’ve identified 67 cases (as of last Friday night) in which district courts have ruled either in favor of or against preliminary relief. For counting purposes, when multiple lawsuits produced a single, consolidated ruling, we count that as only one. And when a court has ruled on both a TRO and a preliminary injunction, we likewise count that as one case (and as a “grant” if the court granted a TRO or a PI). Overall, district courts have granted some type of preliminary relief in 46 of those 67 cases (68.7%). To jump to the bottom line, those 67 rulings have come from 51 different district judges appointed by seven different presidents sitting in 14 different district courts across eight circuits. (The grants have come from 39 different judges appointed by five different presidents and sitting in 11 different district courts across seven circuits.)

Against that backdrop, here are some more specific responses to some of the claims that are floating around out there:

1. Are we seeing more rulings against Trump than against his predecessors?

Yes, but this answer has to be put into context. Last week, President Trump signed his 100th executive order—in only 65 days in office (as of last Wednesday). As that linked CBS story notes, the previous record for executive orders during a new President’s first 100 days was the 99 signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. President Biden, in contrast, signed only 37 orders during the same time period (and Trump signed only 17 during the first 65 days of his first term). In other words, we’ve seen a much greater amount of action by Trump over the first 10 weeks of his presidency—which would correlate to more judicial challenges even if those actions weren’t as legally controversial as so many of them have been. Yes, courts have been busier than their predecessors, but the White House has been even busier—a fact it has been trumpeting rather loudly. (Congress, meanwhile has not; since January 3, it has enacted a total of four statutes—even though at least some of these legal challenges could surely be mooted by statutes clearly providing the President with the authority he claims he already has.)

2. Are the plaintiffs in these cases “judge-shopping”?

No. With one fleeting exception,1 none of the 67 lawsuits we found in which interim relief has been sought against Trump administration policies have been filed in “single-judge divisions” (where a case has a 100% chance of being assigned to a specific judge). This kind of “judge-shopping” is distinct from “forum-shopping,” in which litigants with options pick where to file based on various factors, perhaps including the overall composition of the local bench. At least with regard to finding a way to bring a case so that a specific, hand-picked judge will be assigned to decide it, we haven’t seen any of those in the cases in our dataset.

*snip*

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1. Vladeck Is An American Hero - He Is One Of Many That ARE Fighting Their Fight With Decency And Honor!