How many lawsuits currently exist against Donald Trump
Executive summary
There is no single, authoritative count of “how many lawsuits currently exist against Donald Trump” because different organizations count different types of cases — state attorney general suits, civil defamation claims, criminal indictments, and administrative challenges to executive actions — and many trackers explicitly limit their scope; estimates in reporting range from dozens to “hundreds.” The Associated Press describes “hundreds of lawsuits” challenging Trump administration actions [1], the ACLU reports it brought “over 230 legal actions” against the administration in 2025 alone [2], and a Stateline survey tallied 71 lawsuits filed by Democratic state attorneys general in the first year of the administration [3].
1. Why a single number is elusive: differing scopes and counting rules
Counting lawsuits depends on methodology: some trackers, like Just Security’s and Lawfare’s projects, limit their counts to litigation challenging executive actions and treat appeals as part of the same case rather than separate suits [4] [5], while civil-rights groups and advocacy organizations count “legal actions” that include administrative complaints, amicus filings, and coordinated multi‑state suits [2] [6], producing very different tallies.
2. What the major outlets and groups report right now
Mainstream outlets summarize those divergent tallies: AP’s tracker project says “hundreds” of lawsuits have been filed during Trump’s second administration challenging executive orders and administrative moves [1], Stateline reports 71 lawsuits brought by Democratic state attorneys general in the administration’s first year [3], and the ACLU claims it took over 230 legal actions against the administration in 2025 [2]; each of these numbers is factual within its own defined frame but they cannot be aggregated without careful de-duplication.
3. Categories that inflate headline totals
The raw totals balloon because the litigation ecosystem includes multiple categories: lawsuits by states and cities against administration policy (counted by Stateline and tracked by Lawfare) [3] [5], mass filings and class actions by civil-rights groups (noted by NAACP LDF and others) [6], many media‑related defamation suits brought by or against Trump (reported by The Washington Post and The Guardian) [7] [8], and administrative challenges tracked by specialized projects that explicitly exclude suits where the federal government is plaintiff [4].
4. High‑profile examples and why they matter to the count
High‑profile cases—tariff litigation reaching the Supreme Court (Reuters) [9], multi‑state challenges to policy changes where dozens of states join a single suit [3] [5], and the prominent defamation suits against news organizations that have been amended and refiled [8]—illustrate why counts shift: amended complaints, consolidated class actions, and coordinated multi‑state filings can either multiply or collapse entries depending on whether a tracker treats them as one case or several [5] [8].
5. Practical conclusion and how to get the closest answer
The best, honest answer is that the number of lawsuits “against Donald Trump” varies by definition: conservative trackers focused on executive‑action litigation show dozens to low hundreds when appeals are consolidated as single cases [4] [5], civil‑rights and advocacy groups report hundreds of legal actions and interventions [2] [6], and state attorneys general alone counted 71 suits in the first year [3]. No source provided here offers a single unified, up‑to‑the‑minute total that covers criminal indictments, private civil suits, multi‑state litigation, and administrative challenges all together; readers seeking a running total should consult multiple trackers (Just Security, Lawfare, AP) and be attentive to each project’s counting rules [4] [5] [1].