By Jack Queen
(Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at imposing potentially steep costs on parties that seek to block his policies in court.
The order said U.S. Justice Department lawyers must now ask judges to require plaintiffs to pay the government’s costs and damages if it is forced to hold off on implementing a policy that is ultimately found to be lawful. The money would need to be posted up front as a bond, the order said.
Judges are not required to grant the requests, but if they do so, plaintiffs who sue the government could be forced to put up enormous sums of money in order to proceed with their cases.
“Federal courts should hold litigants accountable for their misrepresentations and ill-granted injunctions,” Trump said in the executive order, accusing “activist organizations” of obtaining improper and overbroad injunctions.
The move is a response to a wave of more than 100 lawsuits filed against the Trump administration over the president’s efforts to shrink the federal bureaucracy, slash government spending and reshape the nation’s immigration system and social policies.
Trump has suffered a series of setbacks in the cases but has also notched some wins in recent weeks.
Government lawyers have asked judges to impose bonds in several cases in recent weeks, but one judge has already rebuffed them.
In a case over Trump’s bid to freeze $3 trillion in federal loans, grants and financial assistance, U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan said it would “defy logic” to “hold plaintiffs hostage” with a bond. AliKhan has blocked the freeze while she weighs the merits of the case.
Government lawyers have also asked for bond in a lawsuit over cuts to medical research grants and in another lawsuit over the funding freeze. Judges have yet to rule on those requests.
(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York; Editing by Leigh Jones and Lincoln Feast.)
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