JUDGES IN THE FEDERAL COURT that handles cases in the Bay Area find themselves presiding over a bevy of cases that stem from the executive orders that President Donald Trump began to drop on Jan. 20, his inauguration day.
It is a telling sign of the times that there are half a dozen “trackers” devoted to keeping tabs on litigation against the Trump administration. One of the trackers is maintained by the journal Just Security, based at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law and is self-described as “an editorially independent, non-partisan, daily digital law and policy journal that elevates the discourse on national security, democracy and the rule of law, and rights.”
The Just Security tracker counts 249 cases filed in the first 127 days of the new administration, or roughly two a day. (For comparison, Trump has signed 152 executive orders to date.)
The litigation count is a frugal tally because it does not include suits brought by the Trump administration, just the ones against it. It also does not treat appeals as separate cases from the underlying litigation, and more importantly it treats as a single lawsuit the scores of cases — now more than a hundred — involving the visa status of international students.
Given that most of the cases challenge administrative actions of federal agencies, it is not surprising that the federal court in the District of Columbia has received far more of these cases than the other 93 district courts throughout the country. The Districts of Massachusetts and the Southern District of New York (the district that includes Manhattan) have also seen a good number of cases.
But the district that covers the Bay Area — the Northern District of California — has had well more than its share of these cases. The court has had at least 10 major cases, many involving hot button issues that seem destined to be ultimately decided in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Legal avenues run through San Francisco
In two of the cases, the high court has already issued interim rulings on whether to suspend orders from Bay Area judges.
The cases have been widely distributed among the Northern District of California’s judges, with nine from the court’s 25 judges each presiding over a case. (One case is being heard by a magistrate, but that one — a challenge to the executive order that seeks to narrow the definition of birthright citizenship — was put on hold because two other cases on the East Coast raise the same issue.) Most of the Bay Area cases are being heard by judges sitting in San Francisco.
Beyond the cases in federal court in the Bay Area, state Attorney General Rob Bonta and San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu have each been active in filing cases outside of California, often joining with other cities and states to press issues of import to all.
Bonta has continued the approach of Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general during much of Trump’s first term in office when California claimed the mantle as the home of the “Resistance” and sued the Trump administration more than a hundred times. (Becerra followed Kamala Harris as California’s attorney general and later went on to serve as the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during President Joe Biden’s administration.
The cases pending in the Bay Area cover a number of hot topics, including the legality of Trump-imposed tariffs, the deconstruction of federal agencies by the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, and cuts in federal funding for cities that don’t agree to change their policies on sanctuary cities or diversity, equity and inclusion, also known as DEI.
Several cases are grounded in immigration issues, a particularly sensitive subject for the Trump administration and an area where it has taken aggressive action.
An appealing environment
In one case, District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin issued a preliminary injunction against the termination of federal funding to a group of organizations that provide legal services to “unaccompanied children,” that is, foreign-born children who arrived in the U.S without a parent or caretaker. The administration has appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
In another, District Judge Jeffrey White, sitting in Oakland, entered a nationwide preliminary injunction to protect the immigration status of international students studying in the United States under F-1 visas after the Trump administration unilaterally terminated their immigration record status.
District Judge William Alsup is well-known for his biting commentary and impatience with lawyers and their clients. He demonstrated those traits in ordering six federal agencies to reinstate thousands of employees terminated by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, finding that only the agencies could decide to fire their own personnel.
The administration unsuccessfully sought to block Alsup’s order in the 9th Circuit appeals court, but the U.S. Supreme Court found that many of the plaintiffs did not have legal “standing” to pursue the case and stayed Alsup’s order. The matter returned to Alsup, who found that the other plaintiffs in the case did have standing to seek relief and he entered another injunction. That order is currently under appeal.
A similar pattern occurred in a case before Judge Edward Chen that involved a challenge to the administration’s termination of Temporary Protected Status or TPS for Venezuelan nationals. TPS status allows an individual to reside in the country under certain conditions. Biden extended TPS for Venezuelans, but Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem vacated the extension. (The plaintiffs alleged that she referred to the Venezuelan TPS holders as “dirtbags;” she later claimed she was referring to gang members.)
Chen wrote a 78-page decision postponing Noem’s termination of TPS during the litigation. The 9th Circuit rejected a challenge to his order but on May 19, the Supreme Court granted the government a stay.
Seeking sanctuary
Judge William Orrick, another Bay Area judge known for speaking his mind, entered a preliminary injunction on April 24 preventing the administration from eliminating or suspending federal funding to sanctuary cities pursuant to an executive order issued shortly after the inauguration.
After the injunction was in place, the president issued a new executive order on the same general topic of funding for sanctuary cities. On May 6, Orrick clarified his earlier order and said it would apply to decisions under the new executive order, though he said that the government could make decisions on funding on unrelated grounds.
The judges of the district court for the Northern District of California seem likely to continue to participate in the explosion of litigation against the Trump administration.
“California law protects trans people. That won’t change. Maine won in court. So will California. There’s only one answer to a bully: No.” State Sen. Scott Wiener
On Tuesday, state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, issued a statement that alluded to Maine’s run-in with Trump over his demand that Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, stop transgender girl athletes from competition in the state and threatening Maine’s federal funding if it did not comply.
Wiener said, “Trump is now targeting California just like he targeted Maine: Threatening to withhold federal funds if California doesn’t follow his illegal edicts targeting transgender people.”
Wiener continued, “California law protects trans people. That won’t change. Maine won in court. So will California. There’s only one answer to a bully: No. As Maine Governor Janet Mills said, ‘See you in court.’”