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How many times has Joe Biden been sued as President of the United States?
Executive summary
Available reporting and trackers show hundreds of individual lawsuits have been filed against the Biden administration by states, businesses, advocacy groups and officials — but there is no single, authoritative count in the documents provided here; individual tallies cited include specific campaigns (e.g., Texas AG Ken Paxton’s claim of 106 suits he filed) and projections (e.g., Chamber of Commerce expecting “at least 22” suits) rather than a consolidated, verified total [1] [2]. Public trackers and state press releases catalog many separate multistate and sectoral cases — for example, 19 states sued over the federal contractor vaccine rule in 2021, and multistate suits have targeted student loan relief and other Biden actions [3] [4].
1. A sprawling litigation landscape, not a single number
There is no single source among the provided materials that compiles every lawsuit filed against President Biden or “the Biden administration” into one definitive tally. Coverage instead documents many discrete waves of litigation: multistate suits over student-loan relief, 19-state suits over a COVID contractor-vaccine rule, immigration and asylum challenges, advocacy-group suits alleging failure to prevent genocidal acts, and frequent state attorney-general lawsuits documented in press releases and trackers [4] [3] [5] [6]. Just Security’s litigation tracker framework illustrates the complexity by cataloguing major decisions and inherited cases without offering one headline total [7].
2. State attorneys general: prolific litigants and partisan context
State attorneys general have been especially active — sometimes framing litigation as a check on executive overreach. Texas AG Ken Paxton’s office, for instance, states he has filed more than 100 lawsuits against the Biden administration and touted winning a substantial share of those suits; that press release cites Paxton’s own count of 106 suits he has filed against the administration [1]. Separately, West Virginia’s AG circulated an analysis claiming an “unprecedented number of lawsuits” during Biden’s first 100 days; those materials are advocacy documents from state offices and reflect partisan legal strategy as well as factual claims [8].
3. Business groups and predictable regulatory fights
Business and trade groups have forecasted or filed numerous suits alleging regulatory overreach. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce told reporters it expects to file “at least 22” lawsuits against the administration before the end of the term, framing litigation as a response to rules the Chamber views as exceeding agency authority [2]. Those projections help explain part of the litigation volume: regulatory rulemakings often spawn coordinated legal challenges from industry coalitions rather than isolated private claims [2].
4. Litigation over high-profile policy moves
Several high-profile Biden policies prompted immediate, multistate or national litigation. The administration’s attempted student loan debt relief drew multistate suits led by Nebraska and Missouri and ultimately reached the Supreme Court; the administration lost that challenge, a concrete example where litigation produced a decisive judicial outcome [4]. Similarly, the 2021 federal-contractor vaccine mandate prompted 19-state litigation to block the rule [3]. More recent actions, such as asylum changes at the southern border, prompted nonprofit-led suits [5].
5. Human-rights and novel claims broaden the docket
Not all litigation is traditional regulatory or federal-state conflict. Civil liberties and human-rights organizations have filed suits against the Biden administration on novel grounds — for example, alleging failure to prevent “genocide” in Gaza and seeking declarations to halt U.S. aid or pressure Israeli conduct; these cases expand the legal landscape into international-law and moral-accountability claims [6] [9] [10]. These suits are less frequent but often high-profile and legally complex.
6. Why you won’t find a single, reliable tally in these sources
The available documents are a mix of advocacy releases, party-aligned AG statements, specialty trackers, and news reporting — none compiles every case into one verified total. Some figures are forecasts or partisan counts (e.g., Paxton’s 106 or the Chamber’s “at least 22”), while other materials catalogue specific categories (multistate suits, major policy challenges) without summing them [1] [2] [4] [7]. That means any single-number claim drawn from these sources risks conflating different producers’ counts or ignoring duplications [8].
7. Bottom line for readers
If you want a defensible numeric answer, available sources do not provide a single consolidated count; you can assemble an approximate total only by aggregating multiple trackers and verifying whether “suits against the administration” include agency-level, multistate, and private plaintiffs and whether duplicate cases are counted separately [7] [4]. For context, expect hundreds of individual filings across state AG offices, trade groups and advocacy organizations, with frequent partisan framing in press materials and periodic landmark rulings that shape the practical impact of that litigation [1] [2] [3].