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
Bernath weeps.
Isn’t there a combat dogma to the effect that when one is attacked one should respond with overwhelming violence (figuratively in this case)?
Sounds like a good plan to me!
The Progs are always whining about how Trump is a fascist dictator. But if that were true, they likely would all be facing firing squads. Maybe they should take the scenes of General Strelnikov’s train in “Doctor Zhivago” as a cautionary example of what a real dictatorship of the proletariat looks like.
NICE!
I approve this message. Mrs Marx.
You mean can be real financial consequences in filing frivolous lawfare suits? That will take all the fun out of it.
They should all be hit with Rule 11 sanctions. They frequently run in the tens of thousands.
AFAIK, there is not a “loser pays” laws.
But there should be.
One of the few times I would advocate for Gooberment intervention, such a law should be passed. And enforced.
That should take the wind out of the frivolous lawsuits sails. And be applied equally to everybody. Serf to CEO.
What is well specified about this Code is that it does not penalize the plaintiff if they win, it only ensures that they are not filing to delay the proper role of government. Kind of like a Bail Bond. You put your money down, if you win you get your money back and the injunction against the corrupt government. If you lose you lose the money!
I don’t understand. What does this mean in practice? How is this going to stop the libtards?
No injunction bond, then no preliminary injunction. And any issued temporary restraining order (TRO) immediately expires.
Many state courts have a similar provision requiring an undertaking bond as a condition of the issuance of a preliminary injunction. They are not cheap to obtain. They are similar to the bonds required for certain types of appeals; I once collected over 60K to collect my firm’s legal fees and costs as prevailing party from the bonding company after winning on appeal.
Remember when I made mention (as did others) that we’ve only won a battle back in November? The war continues…and will continue until every weapon is brought to bear upon the domestic despotic enemies of our Republic.
“You may fire when you are ready, Gridley“
Prepare…
Wow KoB, congratulations in quoting a Yankee naval commander. I was worried there for a second about your unqualified support for the Democrats in the South during the Civil War.
The scam party has always been the scam party.
I support the Warriors, Slow Joe…not the politicians. Most of the Southern Yeoman Farmers, mechanics, and working class that served in the Confederate States Army did not support the demonrat party. And less than 2% of the men that toted rifles, pulled lanyards, “jined the cavalry, or sailed the oceans blue owned a slave. Truly a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. They supported their State defending it from an invading army, not a central federal government. Lot more “Democrats” in the north than there were in the South. The base cause of that war was the politicians and business men that were fighting for control of the government. History taught today paints a very distorted and broad brush that all Southerners were democrats and all Southerners owned slaves. That is simply not true.
Again…if the politicians had to fight the wars…there would be no wars. And I don’t think that I have EVER expressed unqualified support for demonrats in the South during the WBTS. My folks then were either Whigs or Jacksonians.
I chose that quote for a reason. Would you have felt better if I’d used “Then, Sir…we’ll give them the bayonet!”?
Ok. When you put it that way I can’t but to agree. The “cornerstone” speech by that Stephen guy that became the VP for the Confederacy make it all clear the Civil War was nothing but a Democrat overreach, damn the 90 percent of the whites in the South that did not own slaves.
They even used the same arguments they use today. “If we deport all the illegals, who will work the fields?”
There was a legal term I learned here. “Vexatious litigant”. Amazing stuff you can learn here.
I believe a certain Ber-nasty former topic currently maintaining -6 Angels was a prime example of same.
(((OVER)))
Rustle, Rustle.
He was the exact example. I’d understood the concept previously, I learned the legal term here. The “Death by a thousand cuts” legal process.
Over the years I have fought a number of vexatious litigants. In most states that person has to be representing himself pro per and have filed numerous meritless lawsuits. Whereas litigants rep’d by lawers cannot be found to be vexatious litigants in many states.
Now we need a “three strikes and you’re out” law for judges. Get overturned 3 times and you lose your job, since you obviously don’t know how to do it properly.