The final judgements could have long-lasting impacts on issues including National Guard deployment and grant clawbacks.
A flood of litigation continues to hamper President Donald Trump’s agenda, as hundreds of lawsuits challenge his actions on gender issues, tariffs, immigration, National Guard deployment, and other issues.
A common theme of many lawsuits is the claim that the president has overstepped his executive authority.
Some of the cases have already reached the Supreme Court, where Trump scored a major win in June and a series of wins on the emergency docket.
Eventual decisions on outstanding cases could have long-lasting impacts. Win, and not only can Trump press forward with his key policies, but the court will also have carved out a clearer scope of executive power.
Here are some of the key issues, the legal battlegrounds in which they will be fought, hints on how judges might rule, and their implications for the future.
| Tariffs, Emergency Economic Powers |
| National Guard, Posse Comitatus |
| Illegal Immigrants |
| Alien Enemies Act |
| Transgender Issues |
| Grant Clawbacks and DEI |
Tariffs, Emergency Economic Powers
Trump’s broad tariff agenda sparked a legal battle that has been heard by the Supreme Court and judgment is pending.
A group of states and businesses have challenged the tariffs the president imposed on Canada and Mexico over their failure to police drug trafficking and illegal immigration at their borders, and the reciprocal tariffs he imposed on scores of other countries.
Trump issued those tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which allows the president to take actions such as regulating imports during a national emergency. Before Trump, presidents had used the law only to impose sanctions.
A district court in the District of Columbia ruled in May that the IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.
In a separate case in May, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that Trump’s tariffs did not address the issue of drug trafficking, and were therefore unjustified. It also ruled that the IEEPA does not give Trump power to impose “unlimited” tariffs, because that power belongs to Congress, and has not been delegated to the president.
Those cases eventually reached the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on Nov. 5 and is yet to issue its decision.
During oral arguments, some justices expressed skepticism that Congress had authorized the type of tariffs Trump imposed.
The Supreme Court is also considering whether the law—if it does, in fact, authorize Trump’s tariffs—upsets the nation’s separation of powers and is therefore unconstitutional.
“Congress, as a practical matter, can’t get this power back once it’s handed it over to the President,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said. “It’s a one-way ratchet toward the gradual, but continual, accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people’s elected representatives.”
At one point during the Nov. 5 hearing, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh seemed more sympathetic to the administration’s position. They questioned how, as one attorney argued, the law could allow Trump to impose something as large as a complete embargo but not a small tariff.
By Stacy Robinson and Sam Dorman
