Trump v. California: The biggest legal clashes
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration and California are fighting a furious multifront legal war, and every week seems to bring a new courtroom battle.
“It’s bloody combat,” Jessica Levinson, who teaches at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said last week. “This isn’t a cold war. It’s a scorching hot war. And that’s politically expedient for both sides.”
The state has filed 29 lawsuits against the federal government since President Donald Trump took office, on issues including immigration, the environment and voting rights.
“Government by litigation isn’t what the American people voted for,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday, “and attempting to thwart an administration’s elected agenda through endless, meritless lawsuits is a dangerous precedent.”
That same day, Sessions filed suit against the state, accusing it of interfering with the sale of federal lands. It followed a separate suit last month to block three state laws that sought to protect unauthorized immigrants.
Clashes between states and the federal government are nothing new, said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University.
“This has happened throughout American history, but under the Obama and Trump administrations it has happened more often,” he said.
In the Obama years, red states tried to strike down the heart of the Affordable Care Act and succeeded in blocking a major immigration program. “Now we see the blue states battling Trump over sanctuary cities, the census and other issues,” Somin said.
Greg Abbott, now the governor of Texas, used to say that his job description as the state’s attorney general was simple: “I go to the office in the morning, I sue Barack Obama, and then I go home.”
Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general, has said that his attitude is slightly different. “We don’t wake up in the morning looking to pick a fight with the Trump administration,” he said. “But we will do what is necessary to defend our values.”
Texas sued the Obama administration at least 48 times, according to a survey conducted by The Texas Tribune. The Trump administration is a little more than a year old, and California is already within striking distance of those numbers.
California has been doing well in court, winning more than a dozen rulings against the administration. Many of those victories came from federal judges in the state, and Sessions may have been referring to them when he complained about