President Donald Trump faced a barrage of lawsuits challenging his agenda during his first year back in the White House, but many of those legal battles turned into victories at the Supreme Court.
The various lawsuits launched against the Trump administration led to an unprecedented number of injunctions by federal district courts, creating an unusually busy year for the typically sleepy Supreme Court emergency docket, leading the justices to take up cases for full arguments quicker than they typically do.
Trump gets dozens of wins on the emergency docket
The Supreme Court’s emergency docket is designed as a way for parties in lower court proceedings to seek a pause of that court’s ruling or injunction, and the justices typically reject most petitions they receive. Through the first 11 months of the second Trump administration, the high court has received more than 30 petitions to its emergency docket from the Justice Department and has sided with the DOJ all but three times.
Trump’s victories on the emergency docket span a variety of issues, including massive plans to trim the size of the federal workforce. In July, the high court granted stays in two petitions, allowing mass layoffs at the Department of Education, along with a more sweeping reduction-in-force effort at various federal agencies.
The Trump administration was also successful in a trio of emergency petitions over the firing of independent agency heads, beginning with a lawsuit over the firing of Democrat-appointed members of the Merit Systems Protection Board and the National Labor Relations Board. The May order in Trump v. Wilcox found that the president “may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents.”
The two later emergency petitions, dealing with firings of members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, respectively, were also granted by the high court. The FTC firing case, Trump v. Slaughter, was taken up by the justices on an expedited basis to the merits docket, with the justices appearing likely to expand presidential firing power within the executive branch based on December 2025 oral arguments in the case.
The other wins the Trump administration got on the emergency docket included allowing the policy of banning transgender people from the military, mandating that the gender listed on passports is that person’s biological sex, and allowing the deportation of illegal immigrants to countries other than their country of origin.
The decisions have largely been on ideological lines, with the six justices appointed by Republican presidents largely siding with the administration, while the three justices appointed by Democratic presidents generally said they would deny the emergency requests.
While the Trump administration has been overwhelmingly successful on the emergency docket, it has had a mixed track record on emergency petitions regarding immigration policy. Two key losses on the emergency docket for the Trump administration included the high court ordering the administration to “facilitate” the return of illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, after he was deported to El Salvador despite a withholding order against such action, and halting deportations under the Alien Enemies Act in Texas in May.
Limiting universal injunctions is first win on the merits docket for Trump
While the Trump administration had dozens of cases on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, it only saw one case argued and decided by the justices on their merits docket in 2025. The lone ruling was a significant victory in the fight against universal injunctions.
One of the issues that emerged during the early months of Trump’s second term was lower courts’ prolific use of universal injunctions, which blocked administration policies and actions nationwide, instead of just the parties to the lawsuit. The administration brought to the Supreme Court a trio of universal injunctions blocking the president’s birthright citizenship order, asking for the high court to limit lower courts’ ability to issue these sweeping orders.
In the 6-3 ruling in Trump v. CASA, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, dismissed the idea that lower courts have the broad ability to issue universal injunctions, significantly limiting their ability to do so.
“The universal injunction was conspicuously nonexistent for most of our Nation’s history,” Barrett wrote in the June 2025 ruling. “Its absence from 18th- and 19th-century equity practice settles the question of judicial authority. That the absence continued into the 20th century renders any claim of historical pedigree still more implausible.”
“Had federal courts believed themselves to possess the tool, surely they would not have let it lay idle,” she added.
The ruling was celebrated by the Trump administration, but since the CASA ruling, lower courts have still found other ways to issue sweeping injunctions, including through class action lawsuits and through lawsuits where states are parties against the federal government. Despite the continued lawsuits and court-ordered pauses of policies post-CASA, the June ruling still marked a major win for the Trump administration.
2026 may be a mixed bag for Trump at the Supreme Court
While the Trump administration got a favorable ruling for the one case it brought to the merits docket, the upcoming cases the high court will consider could be unfavorable to the president.
At the end of 2025, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases brought against the Trump administration over two major issues: the president’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs and his ability to fire independent agency heads. Early in 2026, the high court is also expected to hear arguments over whether Trump’s executive order regarding birthright citizenship is constitutional.
Richard Pierce, a law professor at George Washington University, previously told the Washington Examiner he believes the administration is likely to lose the tariffs case and the birthright citizenship case, but would likely prevail in the independent agency head firing case.
SUPREME COURT GRAPPLES WITH HOW MUCH EXECUTIVE POWER INDEPENDENT AGENCIES REALLY EXERT
During oral arguments over Trump’s tariffs in November 2025, the justices appeared skeptical of the president’s ability to levy sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Conversely, in oral arguments over Trump’s bid to fire independent agency heads without cause in December 2025, a majority of the justices seemed likely to side with the administration.
Oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara, are expected to occur sometime between February and April 2026, with decisions in all three major Trump cases expected by the end of June 2026.