At a Boston hearing in March, US District J. Joo-woon asked his council of states to lose if they didn’t immediately intervene to stop hundreds of millions of dollars in cutting teacher training programs across the country.
“Your honor, the situation is miserable,” California Deputy Atty said. General Laura Fair replied. “As we speak now, statewide programs face the possibility of closures, disbandings and layoffs.”
Joun quickly issued a temporary restraining order that would stop the reduction as “arbitrarily and whimsical.” However, less than a month later, the Supreme Court overturned the decision, finding it failed to rebut the administration’s claim that if the state was spent in the lawsuit, it would be “not likely to recover” the funds.
It was a loss for the state, but it wasn’t the end of the fight over teacher training. It was also just one of many ongoing court battles in a much larger legal war that was being played by California and its allies against the Trump administration.
California has on average challenged administrations twice a week and more than twice a week in the first 100 days of President Trump’s office, according to a Times analysis. He filed 15 lawsuits against the administration. One filed all but one lawsuits alongside other states, filed a brief in favor of other litigators suing the federal government in at least 18 cases.
Attorney for California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office have been working at a blistering pace to draft and file complex legal arguments opposing Trump’s policies on immigration, the economy, tariffs, LGBTQ+ rights, federal employee layoffs, government oversight, the allocation of federal funding to states and localities, the limits of the president’s executive authority and the slash-and-burn budgetary tactics of his billionaire advisor Elon Musk.
Along the way, the state slowed Trump’s agenda and won a victory that could forever block some of his policies. It has won multiple temporary restraining orders and a reserve injunction blocking Trump’s policy measures. This includes a freeze-freezing of trillions of dollars in federal funds already allocated to states by Congress, and Trump’s executive orders to end the natural citizenship of certain immigrant American students.
California also suffers losses in court, allowing judges to hold administrative policies, so the nation argues for the ultimate reversal. The High Court overturned several restraining orders sought by the state and was granted by a district court judge. This includes those relating to teacher preparation grants and other courts that have stopped mass shootings on federal examiner employees.
The state has also been denied an emergency order to block the exercise of masks’ cleaning rights from the federal budget.
Bonta admitted the set-up, but denied that he only denied emergency relief without reaching a final conclusion on the fundamental legality of the administration’s actions or the merits of the state’s challenges.
“We had virtually no lawsuits at this point and were a huge success,” Bonta said.
What is being sued?
All state cases remain active at different stages, depending on when they were filed and how quickly the judge responded.
California filed its first lawsuit on January 21st over Trump’s order to withdraw his citizenship from birth. The order argued that it was a clear violation of the 14th amendment to the Constitution, which states that “all people born in the United States or subject to its jurisdiction are citizens of the United States and the state in which they reside.”
Other groups sued for the same reasons, with three federal judges issued an order stating national policies unconstitutional. The Trump administration appeals the ruling, arguing that district judges cannot issue national orders, and the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the debate on May 15th.
It is unclear whether the High Court will control the constitutionality of Trump’s order or simply control the national authorities of district judges. Either way, Bonta said he was bullish for the ultimate victory.
California and its allies secured an early victory in their second lawsuit, and challenged the office of management and budget memos with federal funding, waiting for a Trump administration’s review of whether it was consistent with the president’s agenda.
A federal judge blocked the freeze and repeatedly ordered the release of fundraising. The Trump administration said it was complying with these orders. This included, last week, the administration filed a “compliance notice” in a court order releasing funds from a federal emergency management agency that Bonta’s office allegedly had been withheld in violation of court orders.
California also obtained a court order that prevented Musk’s government department employees from accessing Treasury data mandatory, but that order has since been changed to allow certain DOGE employees to access such data.
And although the administration said it would appeal the ruling, it has won a permanent injunction blocking the National Institutes of Health’s fundraising wipeout for research at agencies around the country.
The judge reviews briefings from California and the Trump administration, reviewing them in several other cases, including state claims that emergency relief is needed and those by the administration that the lawsuit has no merit.
These include lawsuits where the state is challenging mass shootings at the Department of Education, billions of cuts in health and education funding, Trump’s executive orders requiring voters to show evidence of citizenship and restrictions on mail-in voting, and drastic tariffs on Trump’s foreign trade partners.
In the voting case, the court is considering whether the California lawsuit brought along with other states in Massachusetts should be combined in a similar lawsuit brought in the District of Columbia, where judges have already blocked some of Trump’s orders. In the tariff case brought by Bonta with Gov. Gavin Newsom, the court is considering the Trump administration’s request to move the case to the US Court of International Trade.
California’s latest lawsuit was just filed Friday, challenging the Trump administration’s threat to revoke federal funds from schools with diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
California also supports other litigators challenging the Trump administration.
Through what is known as the Amikos Brief, the state has questioned the Trump administration’s legality of prohibitions against transgender people serving in the military, the suspension of medical care to maintain the gender of transgender youth, suspension of refusal services, halting Asylum protections, temporarily withdrawing Venezuel’s protected status, and threatening to withdraw the move of H.
It also questioned the demolition of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the removal of the National Labor Relations Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, and the attacks on several law firms where legal work has hit the president.
The judge suspended some of these policies as a result of the lawsuit. This includes a ban on trans service members that Trump has now asked to cover in the Supreme Court.
Wide stakes
The mountain of lawsuits continued the role of California’s major resistance during Trump’s first administration, with around 120 cases over four years. The White House and other presidential supporters have criticised the latest lawsuit just as it is the same as the liberals in California.
“In recent years, California’s dreams have been transformed into nightmares of California’s dreams and dystopian scenes of homelessness and outdoor drug use,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement in the Times. “The Trump administration is trying to restore America’s greatness, and if California Democrats work with us, then at least if they don’t throw away taxpayer resources along the way, the people in California will be infinitely better.”
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice said the DOJ “no matter how many frivolous cases are filed, it will continue to fight in court to protect President Trump’s agenda.”
Bonta and other critics of the president see it differently. They pointed out that the state has won frequently by suing the first Trump administration, and said they hope to win many of the current cases.
They said the term is facing a faster pace of challenges as Trump has had a major impact on American democracy and is bravely violating the law at a fierce speed.
“If he’s doing something legal, we won’t take him to court,” Bonta said.
Michael Sozan, a senior fellow at the American Liberal Center, recently co-authored a lengthy report denounced Trump of “destroying constitutional and legal guardrails to build an authoritarian presidency.” The report cites many of the same Trump administration stairs that California sued.
Sozan said states such as California are “acting as a very important breakwater for the new Imperial President,” and Bonta and other state attorney generals “will play an important role in the coming months,” Trump “will try to test the boundaries of law and court precedents and democracy.”
Bonta said California would respond “every time” if Trump and other officials in his administration “continue to break the law.”
“We have a full tank of gas,” he said. “We’re ready to go.”
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