President Trump’s EO potentially adds to the cost of frivolous lawsuits against the administration

As with President Donald Trump’s first presidency, Democrats and their allies are using frivolous lawsuits as one resistance tool against Trump’s policies. These lawsuits add to the court’s workload and ties up the DOJ’s attention, contributing to holding up the executive branch and the courts. Trump, using a law already on the books, issued an executive order demanding securities in response to these lawsuits. The defendant department will demand that the court charges the plaintiffs a security fee equal to what the court sees as the value of costs and damages from an erroneous injunction.

From American Thinker:

On Tuesday, Trump issued a memorandum entitled “Ensuring the Enforcement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c),” and directed it to “the heads of executive departments and agencies.” The order opens by describing the way activists, using donated and government-granted funds, have been obtaining sweeping injunctions from carefully selected district court judges (that is, those seated in forums friendly to Democrats). With the judges’ help, the activists have been ” functionally inserting themselves into the executive policy making process and therefore undermining the democratic process.”

Not only are these practices interfering in the executive branch’s work, but they’re also expensive, because taxpayers ultimately foot the bill, while the DOJ is forced to expend “substantial resources to fighting frivolous suits instead of defending public safety.”

Trump explains that one of the things a well-functioning court does is deter frivolous litigation, and one of the ways it does this is through Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c):

“One key mechanism is Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c) (Rule 65(c)), which mandates that a party seeking a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order (injunction) provide security in an amount that the court considers proper to cover potential costs and damages to the enjoined or restrained party if the injunction is wrongly issued.

What’s important to note (this is me, not Trump), is the language of subsection (c) does not make this security optional. Instead, it’s mandatory, although the government never seems to have bothered pushing for security before:

“The court may issue a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order only if the movant gives security in an amount that the court considers proper to pay the costs and damages sustained by any party found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained. The United States, its officers, and its agencies are not required to give security. (Emphasis mine.)

In other words, while the court has discretion about whether a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order is appropriate, once it makes that determination, it must require that the plaintiff provide security.

Trump states that, moving forward, the government’s new policy is that it will “demand that parties seeking injunctions against the Federal Government must cover the costs and damages incurred if the Government is ultimately found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained.” He instructs the heads of executive departments and agencies to ensure that they make this request to the courts every time.

Additional Reading:

Widburg, A. (2025, March 13). Trump throws down the gauntlet to the out-of-control federal district court judges *UPDATED*. American Thinker. Link.

Category: Donald Trump, Society