Public Citizen has filed 23 lawsuits against the regime since Donald Trump returned to power. There will be more to come in the year ahead, but we wanted to give you an update on all the cases so far.
First, an important note:
Lawsuits against the federal government can move slowly. Both sides are given a lot of time to submit and respond to filings. With the Trump administration acting so recklessly, this deliberate pace can be frustrating, to say the least. That’s why seeking temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions is a key part of our strategy in many cases.
Most of our lawsuits against the regime have not yet reached the point of a final ruling. But in many of these cases, we have succeeded in stopping, or at least reducing, the damage that Trump is trying to inflict. And when these cases are ultimately decided, we of course believe we should prevail.
OK, on to an as-quick-as-we-can-make-it recap of each of our 23 lawsuits so far, starting with the most recent and working back from there.
LAWSUIT #23 — CONSUMER PROTECTION
DATE FILED: December 5, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To stop Trump from completely defunding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
BACKGROUND: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was established after the 2008 financial crisis to keep everyday Americans from getting ripped off by Big Banks. (Public Citizen played a major role in creating the CFPB.) Trump put one of his top lieutenants — Russell Vought, a primary architect of the infamous Project 2025 manifesto — in charge of the Bureau. Vought is refusing to comply with a law that requires him to request funding for the CFPB from the Federal Reserve.
WHERE THINGS STAND: We filed a motion for summary judgment — meaning we asked the court to issue a final ruling right away (because the administration is doing something obviously illegal) and order Vought to request funding for the CFPB as required by law.
LAWSUIT #22 — STUDENT LOANS
DATE FILED: November 4, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To prevent the Trump administration from denying student loan forgiveness to borrowers just because the regime doesn’t like the kind of work they do.
BACKGROUND: In 2007, Congress created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program to help people who go into public service work, including: public school teachers, first responders, social workers, military personnel, librarians, government workers, people who work at homeless shelters and food banks, nurses and other employees at nonprofit hospitals, people who provide services to survivors of domestic violence, and many other kinds of workers. Under Trump’s Education Secretary — the billionaire former professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon — the administration has decided to deny public service loan forgiveness to borrowers whose work it just doesn’t like.
WHERE THINGS STAND: The administration has until early January to file its initial response to our suit.
LAWSUIT #21 — EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION
DATE FILED: October 20, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To block a directive telling staff at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to ignore an entire category of civil rights violations.
BACKGROUND: An employment practice that negatively affects some people more than others because of traits like race, sex, age, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or disability is a form of discrimination known as “disparate impact.” Under Trump, staff at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have been ordered to stop investigating disparate impact claims.
WHERE THINGS STAND: The case was dismissed. The judge ruled that our client was not qualified to sue, but did not rule on whether the administration is acting lawfully.
LAWSUIT #20 — COMMERCIAL DRIVERS LICENSES
DATE FILED: October 20, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To challenge a rule from Trump’s Department of Transportation that prohibits asylum seekers, refugees, and DACA recipients — immigrants who are legally authorized to work here — from getting, renewing, or even keeping existing commercial driver’s licenses.
BACKGROUND: The new rule was based solely on the immigration status of the workers. There is no evidence of a safety issue or any other rational basis for barring people who have passed the written and road tests, and who have legal work authorization, from working as drivers. The administration put the rule into effect immediately, with no advance notice, directly threatening the livelihoods of 200,000 truck drivers, bus drivers, and delivery drivers. The rule will also hurt countless businesses, both large and small — as well as schools and potentially millions of American consumers — that depend on these drivers.
WHERE THINGS STAND: The court granted our motion asking it to put the rule on hold while the case proceeds.***
LAWSUIT #19 — FREE SPEECH FOR FEDERAL WORKERS
DATE FILED: October 3, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To stop the Trump administration from violating the First Amendment rights of federal workers.
BACKGROUND: With the recent government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of government employees set up “out-of-office” emails before being furloughed. But at Trump’s Department of Education — run by the billionaire former professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon — these emails were replaced with a partisan message blaming “Democrat Senators” for the shutdown. That change was made without the employees’ consent and without notice that partisan messages were being sent in their names. In essence, they were being forced to make a political statement, whether they agreed with it or not.
WHERE THINGS STAND: We won. The court granted our motion and ordered the Department of Education to remove the partisan messages from the employees’ emails.***
LAWSUIT #18 — HEALTH RESEARCH
DATE FILED: August 21, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To restore health research grants from a critical agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.
BACKGROUND: In 1999, Congress established the Agency for Health Research and Quality (AHRQ) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to support research into how America’s health system works, how to support patients and clinicians in choosing the best care, how to improve health by improving healthcare delivery, and more. Under the “leadership” of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., HHS has destroyed AHRQ’s capacity to process grant applications, withheld decisions on pending grant applications, and refused to spend appropriated funds.
WHERE THINGS STAND: The court ordered HHS to hold onto the funds it refused to spend — rather than return those funds to the Treasury Department — so that the funding will remain available to be spent if we win the case.
LAWSUIT #17 — JOB CORPS PROGRAM
DATE FILED: June 18, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To prevent the Trump administration from closing Job Corps centers all across the country and shutting down the Job Corps program.
BACKGROUND: Congress created the Job Corps program in 1964 to provide vocational and academic training to low-income young people. The program has continued with ongoing bipartisan support in Congress — even when Richard Nixon wanted to shrink it and Ronald Reagan wanted to eliminate it altogether. But the Trump regime, in flagrant defiance of the law, wants to suspend the program and close all 99 Job Corps centers nationwide. Public Citizen, with Southern Poverty Law Center as co-counsel, filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the administration’s unlawful attempt to close the Job Corps centers.
WHERE THINGS STAND: The court granted our motion for a preliminary injunction — meaning the regime cannot mothball the Job Corps program while the case proceeds — with the judge writing that the administration’s actions were “unprecedented” and that it “unequivocally” acted illegally in its scheme to kill the program.***
LAWSUIT #16 — HUNGER IN AMERICA
DATE FILED: June 10, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To stop the Trump regime from shutting down the National Hunger Clearinghouse and hotline.
BACKGROUND: For more than 30 years, Congress has required the U.S. Department of Agriculture to contract with a nonprofit organization to serve as an information clearinghouse for food assistance resources. Hunger Free America has held that contract since 2014, helping tens of thousands of individuals and families access food banks, soup kitchens, and government programs. But in May — with no explanation or warning — the Trump administration terminated the current contract and took no action to find another nonprofit to maintain the clearinghouse.
WHERE THINGS STAND: In response to our lawsuit, the administration complied with the law and awarded the contract to our client.***
LAWSUIT #15 — CONSUMER PROTECTION
DATE FILED: May 21, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To block Trump’s unlawful firing of members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
BACKGROUND: The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) conducts product-safety research, sets standards, and issues recalls. Under federal law, the agency has five commissioners who serve staggered seven-year terms. To ensure the CPSC’s independence, Congress stipulated that commissioners can be removed by the president prior to the end of their terms only “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office but for no other cause.” However — with no explanation and no suggestion of neglect of duty or malfeasance — Trump illegally attempted to terminate three CPSC commissioners whose terms are not complete.
WHERE THINGS STAND: The District Court ruled in our favor, but the Supreme Court put that ruling on hold while the case proceeds (meaning the commissioners are fired — for now).
LAWSUIT #14 — WORKER HEALTH AND SAFETY
DATE FILED: May 14, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To preserve the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
BACKGROUND: The Trump regime has been quietly dismantling the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which protects workers in high-risk industries like mining, firefighting, construction, and healthcare. Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “leadership” at the Department of Health and Human Services, where NIOSH is housed, the majority of its staff have been fired, slated for termination, or otherwise forced out. As a result, workers throughout the country who otherwise would have been safe will get sick, hurt, and killed on the job.
WHERE THINGS STAND: We are waiting for the court to rule on the administration’s motion for the case to be dismissed.
LAWSUIT #13 — HUMAN RIGHTS
DATE FILED: April 24, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To prevent the Trump administration from shutting down offices within the Department of Homeland Security that safeguard civil rights.
BACKGROUND: Congress has created three offices within the Department of Homeland Security to make sure DHS respects civil rights and civil liberties, to help immigrants who experience problems dealing with department bureaucracy, and to monitor conditions in detention facilities. In March, DHS — under the “leadership” of Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary and self-professed dog killer Kristi Noem — announced its intention to close all three of these oversight offices and fire nearly all of their employees.
WHERE THINGS STAND: The case is proceeding.
LAWSUIT #12 — WORKER RIGHTS AROUND THE WORLD
DATE FILED: April 15, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To reverse the administration’s abrupt and unlawful cancellation of critical international labor rights programs.
BACKGROUND: The Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) protects workers and businesses in the United States from unfair competition by companies and governments that violate workers’ rights to free association and collective bargaining, that use forced labor or child labor, or that otherwise violate labor rights to gain an unfair advantage in the global marketplace. In March, the Trump regime terminated all of ILAB’s cooperative agreements, with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) being run by Elon Musk insisting that the administration would not spend funds Congress specifically appropriated to combat unfair labor practices and to support workers’ rights abroad.
WHERE THINGS STAND: The case is proceeding.
LAWSUIT #11 — CLIMATE CHANGE & ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
DATE FILED: April 14, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To restore key environmental data the Trump regime scrubbed from various government websites.
BACKGROUND: Shortly after the Trump regime took over in January, it started removing interactive pages related to climate change and environmental justice from the taxpayer-funded websites of various agencies — including the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. We filed suit on behalf of the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and others.
WHERE THINGS STAND: We are waiting for the court to rule on the administration’s motion for the case to be dismissed.
LAWSUIT #10 — GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY
DATE FILED: April 8, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To stop the Trump administration from keeping its decisions about how to spend taxpayer dollars secret.
BACKGROUND: Trump put a man named Russell Vought — a primary architect of the infamous Project 2025 manifesto — in charge of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). By law, OMB is required to publicly post information about the funds allocated to each federal agency. This is known as the Public Apportionments Database. But under Vought’s leadership and in clear violation of the law, OMB took that database offline and told Congress it would stop maintaining the database altogether. The Public Apportionments Database is one of the most important tools we have for monitoring how the government spends taxpayer money — including whether the administration is flouting Congress’ constitutional authority over government spending (the “power of the purse”).
WHERE THINGS STAND: In response to our lawsuit, the court ordered the administration to restore the apportionments database while the case proceeds. Although OMB has appealed, the information is now back online.***
LAWSUIT #9 — EDUCATION IN AMERICA
DATE FILED: April 4, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To challenge the Trump regime’s dismantling of the Institute of Education Sciences.
BACKGROUND: The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is a semi-independent division within the Department of Education that conducts, supports, and disseminates high-quality, evidence-based research about education in America. In February, the Department of Education — run by the billionaire former professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon — began dismantling IES by cancelling dozens of contracts for research studies and support services vital to the agency’s functioning. In March, roughly 90% of IES employees were notified that they would be terminated.
WHERE THINGS STAND: After we sued, the administration announced that it would not cancel access to a key research database as it had planned to do. We are waiting for the court to rule on the administration’s motion to dismiss the case.
LAWSUIT #8 — TAXPAYER PRIVACY
DATE FILED: March 7, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To prevent the IRS from illegally sharing taxpayer data with DHS and ICE.
BACKGROUND: Like other workers, undocumented workers are required to pay income taxes. The Internal Revenue Service is legally required to treat their tax records, like those of every other taxpayer, as private and confidential unless disclosure is specifically allowed by law. No law permits the IRS to disclose tax records for immigration enforcement purposes. But the Trump regime — specifically the Department of Homeland Security along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement — wants to access tax data to support its mass deportation agenda. This is not just about the rights of undocumented workers: Congress enacted taxpayer privacy laws in response to misuse of IRS records during the presidency of Richard Nixon.
WHERE THINGS STAND: The judge agreed that sharing tax information for civil immigration enforcement is not permissible. But, accepting the administration’s claim that it would share such information only for use in criminal investigations, the judge denied our motion for a preliminary injunction. We have appealed that ruling.
LAWSUIT #7 — CONSUMER PROTECTION
DATE FILED: February 13, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To stop the Trump administration from eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
BACKGROUND: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was established after the 2008 financial crisis to keep everyday Americans from getting ripped off by Big Banks. (Public Citizen played a major role in creating the CFPB.) Trump has openly declared his intent to “totally eliminate” the CFPB, and he put one of his top lieutenants — Russell Vought, a primary architect of the infamous Project 2025 manifesto — in charge of the Bureau. But the administration cannot lawfully dismantle a federal agency created by statute. Any attempt to do so is in defiance of the Constitution’s separation of powers. That hasn’t stopped Vought from trying to fire the vast majority of CFPB employees, among other schemes to shut the Bureau down.
WHERE THINGS STAND: The judge granted our motion for a preliminary injunction blocking Vought from summarily firing CFPB staff and cancelling CFPB contracts while the case proceeds. We are waiting for an appeals court ruling on the administration’s appeal of that preliminary injunction. We recently withdrew as co-counsel in this case to focus on Lawsuit #23 (above).***
LAWSUIT #6 — FOREIGN AID
DATE FILED: February 10, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To block Trump’s illegal and inhumane foreign aid freeze.
BACKGROUND: On his very first day back in office, Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to freeze foreign assistance that supports humanitarian efforts worldwide, including $4 billion that was supposed to be spent by the end of September. The administration then froze, and later terminated, a large swath of grants for foreign assistance work. Only about 1% of the federal budget — just one penny out of every dollar — goes to foreign aid. With that relatively modest expenditure, American aid helps millions and millions of people all across the world who are facing disease, famine, illness, malnutrition, and oppression.
WHERE THINGS STAND: In February, the court ordered the government to pay all the grantees’ invoices for work they had already done. More recently — after a great deal of back-and-forth in this case, some of which made national headlines — we won a preliminary injunction in the lower court requiring the administration to spend appropriated funds before September 30. The Supreme Court stepped in and allowed the administration to impound (meaning not spend) about $4 billion. The case is proceeding.***
LAWSUIT #5 — GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY
DATE FILED: February 7, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To keep “DOGE” out of the Department of Education
BACKGROUND: Operatives from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) being run by Elon Musk infiltrated Department of Education databases that include financial information of thousands of student-loan applicants and their families.
WHERE THINGS STAND: After the court indicated that our clients could not show harm needed to pursue the case, we closed the case voluntarily.
LAWSUIT #4 — GLOBAL HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
DATE FILED: February 6, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To preserve the U.S. Agency for International Development.
BACKGROUND: Shortly after returning to power, Trump tried to dissolve the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in clear disregard for the law and the Constitution. Elon Musk later bragged that he had spent a weekend “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” Established by Congress in 1961 — when John F. Kennedy was president — USAID provides life-saving food, medicine, and support to much of the rest of the world. In January, though, Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, illegally ordered USAID workers to stop doing their jobs, froze the agency’s funding, and prepared to lay off or fire nearly all employees. With USAID in disarray, medical clinics, soup kitchens, refugee assistance programs, and countless other critical projects across the globe could not operate.
WHERE THINGS STAND: We initially won a temporary restraining order to stop Trump from carrying out this global humanitarian nightmare. But the judge later lifted it, allowing the regime to terminate the majority of USAID’s employees, and granted the administration’s motion to dismiss the case. We have appealed that ruling.
LAWSUIT #3 — PUBLIC HEALTH
DATE FILED: February 4, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To restore critical health information the Trump regime deleted from government websites.
BACKGROUND: Based on a directive from the administration to scrub information related to gender or “DEI” from government websites, essential public health agencies — like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — removed vital information that doctors and researchers all across the country were using to treat patients, monitor diseases, advance medical discoveries, and save lives. In some instances, information that had been publicly available going back to the 1990s had vanished.
WHERE THINGS STAND: We won. The court issued a final ruling in our favor, requiring the agencies to restore the deleted information, which they have done.***
LAWSUIT #2 — FINANCIAL PRIVACY
DATE FILED: February 3, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To limit “DOGE” infiltration of the Treasury Department.
BACKGROUND: The U.S. Treasury Department possesses sensitive personal and financial information for millions and millions of Americans who send money to or receive money from the federal government. Federal laws protect such information from improper disclosure and misuse — including by barring disclosure to individuals who lack a lawful and legitimate need for it. But instead of protecting Americans’ private information as required by law, Scott Bessent, Trump’s jillionaire Treasury Secretary, allowed operatives from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) being run by Elon Musk access to the data.
WHERE THINGS STAND: We are waiting for the court to rule on our motion for summary judgment in the case.
LAWSUIT #1 — “DOGE” WAS ILLEGALLY STRUCTURED
DATE FILED: January 20, 2025
WHY WE SUED: To prevent “DOGE” from operating in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
BACKGROUND: Within literally one minute of Trump taking office on January 20, Public Citizen filed suit in federal court alleging that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) being run by Elon Musk was not in compliance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, a law that requires federal advisory committees to consist of members with a fair balance of viewpoints, to make meetings open to the public, and to make records and work product available to the public.
WHERE THINGS STAND: With DOGE mutating into something other than an advisory committee, we voluntarily closed this case.
We know that was a lot. So here’s a recap of the recap:
In 8 of these 23 cases — those marked with three asterisks (***) at the end of the entry — we have either won the case outright or gotten a ruling, such as a preliminary injunction, that impedes whatever bad thing the regime is trying to do while the case proceeds.
That’s over a third of the lawsuits we have filed so far! And — in terms of what we noted above about the pace at which these kinds of cases tend to make their way through the courts — it’s still early. We fully expect more progress in some of these suits.
Given the powerful forces and legal realities we’re up against, this is something that everyone who supports Public Citizen can and should take pride in.
Are these lawsuits alone enough to fully defeat Trump and MAGA? Of course not. But are they a meaningful part of the pushback that is the only chance we have to collectively save our country? No doubt about it.
What you and Public Citizen are doing together matters. What hundreds of other organizations, big and small, are doing matters. What millions upon millions of our fellow Americans are doing matters. We believe that to our core. We take solace in that. And we draw inspiration from that. We hope you do, too.
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- Lisa Gilbert & Robert Weissman, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
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