To discourage activist litigation and judicial overreach, government lawyers have been requesting the payment of bonds from litigants seeking to block the Trump administration's policies, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The requests have not been successful. Federal judges have largely ruled against the government, ordering minimal bonds or no bonds at all, according to the Journal. In one suit, the government requested a $23 million bond, which was denied, the Journal said.
"In a case where the government is alleged to have unlawfully withheld trillions of dollars of previously committed funds to countless recipients, it would defy logic — and contravene the very basis of this opinion — to hold Plaintiffs hostage for the resulting harm," wrote Judge Loren AliKhan after one request.
A White House memo said the bonds would allow the government to recoup any losses it suffers from interim rulings, including the cost of paying federal workers an agency is blocked from laying off.
President Donald Trump said that legal advocacy groups file lawsuits for fundraising and political reasons, facing no repercussions when the lawsuits fail, the Journal reported.
Melissa Keaney, a lawyer at the International Refugee Assistance Project told the Journal in her 15 years of civil litigation, she had never heard the government make such a request, calling it "completely unprecedented."
The Justice Department's first bond request came in February, before the memo, in a case challenging a Trump order to end diversity programs. U.S. District Judge Adam Abelson set a $0 bond in response to the request, the Journal said.
Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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