California has sued this Trump administration way more than the last one. Here’s where cases stand

Six months after President Donald Trump took the oath of office, California Attorney General Rob Bonta has unleashed a torrent of litigation against his administration.

Bonta, the Democrat who leads the state Department of Justice, has filed or joined a whopping 34 lawsuits against the Republican administration on behalf of California. That’s four times as many such lawsuits as those by Bonta’s predecessor and fellow Democrat, Xavier Becerra, at this point in Trump’s first term.

As Gov. Gavin Newsom positions himself as leader of the Democratic resistance to Trump, and hints that he’ll run for president in 2028, Bonta’s lawsuits are the tip of the spear in California’s battles with the Republican administration. In courts, the state has sparred relentlessly with the feds over everything from climate action and funding for schools to birthright citizenship and its “sanctuary” policy for immigrants without legal status.

“Our position is, we will sue the Trump administration any time he breaks the law, violates the Constitution and hurts the people of California,” Bonta said in an interview with Bay Area News Group. “If he stops breaking the law, we stop suing.”

This winter, California lawmakers seeded Bonta’s department with $5 million specifically to pursue lawsuits against the Trump administration and then doled out another $14 million in the current budget that’s largely expected to carry the crusade through June 2026. With the money, the Department of Justice expanded its legal team, adding 20 more attorneys to work on these cases, a spokesperson said.

The vast majority of these cases are unresolved. But in one early success with a potentially massive windfall, litigation filed by New York, California and other Democratic states led a judge to block the federal government from freezing all federal grants, $168 billion of which was due to California. In another case, a judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding $300 million for electric vehicle chargers in California — money that Congress had already approved.

Elsewhere, Bonta sued unsuccessfully to block Trump’s tariffs, which were expected to hammer California’s economy. The attorney general also attempted to halt the deployment of U.S. Marines to Los Angeles and argued that Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard last month was illegal. Those cases are ongoing but didn’t stop Trump’s moves to quash unrest.

This week alone, Bonta filed three more lawsuits challenging federal funding freezes and new rules that are expected to drive declines in health care coverage.

Bonta is on track to quickly outpace the 122 lawsuits Becerra filed against Trump during his first term, which began in 2017. Asked how those ended, a department spokesperson, Nina Sheridan, referred to a CalMatters analysis that found California won 23 of those cases and lost four. The vast majority were still tied up in the courts at the end of the administration.

Democrats praise Bonta’s campaign in the courts, including U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat representing San Jose who chairs California’s congressional delegation. She condemned Trump for “unconstitutional and outrageous” attempts to cut or condition federal funding and said Democrats in Congress have filed briefs in support of court challenges.

Even a top critic of California Democrats, Republican Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher, sees some value in Bonta’s crusade.

“Should we fight for our fair share of funding? Of course,” he said.

But Gallagher is no fan of Bonta, and he said there’s another dimension to the attorney general’s litigation machine.

“I think his primary motivation is political, to be seen as a fighter against Trump,” Gallagher said.

If Bonta seeks to advance his political career, his path to higher office is unclear. He was expected to run for governor in 2026 but announced last winter that he wouldn’t. The elephant in the room: former Vice President Kamala Harris has said she’ll decide whether to run for governor by the end of the summer, and her entrance would reshape the race.

On litigation, Bonta’s office is working closely with other Democratic attorneys general, including Letitia James of New York, who have taken turns in leading roles. Republicans so far have stayed on the sidelines of the legal battles, which initially played out in blue-state district courts in California, New York and elsewhere. Of the 34 lawsuits against Trump in which California is involved, Bonta’s office is leading about one-third.

The fast pace, Bonta said, is a response to the federal administration’s “flood the zone” tactics. Trump officials have attempted to reshape vast sectors of American policy and governance at a breakneck speed.

“It has been a much more energetic presidency than his first term,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego. “Much of that energy has gone toward taking actions that, at least under current judicial precedent, might seem unconstitutional.”

Bonta started California’s volley of litigation quickly after Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20 and signed more than 25 executive orders in a Washington, D.C., stadium filled with cheering supporters.

Among the orders was Trump’s unprecedented effort to curb birthright citizenship. The next day, California joined a federal lawsuit with New York, San Francisco and a slew of Democratic states to block it from going into effect, arguing that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

Since that first lawsuit, Bonta has announced an average of more than one lawsuit a week.

“We’ve been busy,” he said.

Trump’s birthright citizenship order — which would fundamentally remake the notion of citizenship in the U.S. — had not yet gone into effect. Initially, three federal judges temporarily blocked Trump’s order.

Then, in June, the Supreme Court decided that lower judges generally can’t issue injunctions that apply nationwide. That means Bonta’s office will have to participate in other states’ lawsuits if California is to benefit from judicial orders secured by other attorneys general. The decision isn’t expected to drive a major change in strategy for Bonta, who has quickly signaled that he is willing and able to take the Trump administration to court time and time again.