This obscure law is one reason Trump's agenda keeps losing in court

NBC News

12-02-2025

WASHINGTON — Lawyers challenging President Donald Trump's aggressive use of executive power in the courts are turning to a familiar weapon in their armory: an obscure but routinely invoked federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act.
While lawsuits challenging such provocative plans as ending birthright citizenship and dismantling federal agencies raise weighty constitutional issues, they also claim Trump failed to follow the correct procedures as required under the wonky 1946 statute.
Trump fell afoul of the law in some high-profile cases that reached the Supreme Court during his first term, raising the possibility he could suffer the same fate this time around.
Known in abbreviated form as the APA, the law allows judges to throw out federal agency actions that are "arbitrary and capricious" on various grounds, including failing to articulate why the agencies are changing policy.
Much to the anger of Trump and his officials, judges have been issuing a series of orders putting administration plans on hold, including freezes on federal funding and drastic reductions in staffing. The rulings are at a preliminary stage and often do not include detailed legal reasoning.
In fact, one of Trump's first losses in court in his second term — over an Office of Management and Budget memo ordering across-the-board funding freezes — was based in part on a claim brought under the APA. The administration quickly rescinded the memo, although litigation continues.
"What we're seeing from the Trump administration is they are moving so fast, and they're trying to do so much with so little reasoning, and they're trying to disrupt as much as possible, as fast as possible, that these actions are inherently arbitrary and capricious" under the APA, a lawyer involved in one of the lawsuits said.
One example of plaintiffs' citing the law is a case about Trump's effort to reduce biomedical research funding, which a coalition of states said"violates the Administrative Procedure Act in multiple ways." It fails to "articulate the bases" for the change and shows "disregard for the factual findings" that set the current rate, the lawsuit said.
A judge blocked the policy Monday.
On Tuesday, a judge cited the APA in finding that the administration most likely violated the law in removing webpages featuring medical data that health care professionals rely on.
A lawsuit workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development filed last week seeking to prevent hundreds of staff members' being put on leave also raised APA claims.
'The dissolution of USAID is arbitrary and capricious in multiple respects,' the unions' lawyers argued.
A judge partially granted the unions' request Friday.
In another USAID-related lawsuit filed Tuesday, contractors whose funding has been cut made similar arguments.
The government did not "explain why a comprehensive, undifferentiated freeze was necessary" or explain why a "more orderly and targeted approach" could not have been taken, the lawsuit said.
The APA haunted Trump during his first term.
In 2019, the Supreme Court found that the administration had not revealed its true reason for wanting to add a citizenship question to the census.
"Reasoned decision-making under the Administrative Procedure Act calls for an explanation for agency action. What was provided here was more of a distraction," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote then.
A year later, the court ruled that the administration had failed to consider various factors when it sought to unwind the Obama administration policy that protects "Dreamers" from deportation. Its actions were "arbitrary and capricious" under the APA, Roberts wrote.
On both issues, Trump administration officials "were sloppy, and the court did not like that," said Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
He noted, however, that at this early stage, the administration could still fix at least some of its errors. In Trump's first term, for example, the Supreme Court ultimately upheld a revised version of a travel ban on people entering the country from mostly Muslim-majority countries after a more sweeping policy was pared back.
"The fact they're sloppy out of the gate, I don't think that tells us how the courts will ultimately resolve it," Adler said.
Trump is by no means the only president to have fallen afoul of the APA, which judges routinely cite in striking down federal agency actions on a wide variety of issues, including environmental and consumer regulations that agencies sometimes spend years reviewing.
In a high-profile case during the Biden administration, a federal judge in Texas threw out an immigration enforcement policy that would have prioritized deporting violent criminals.
Among other things, District Judge Drew Tipton found that the administration had failed to take into account evidence about the dangers of recidivism and abscondment among immigrants with criminal records that undermined its policy conclusions.
The government, he added, was required "to show its work. It either failed or refused to do so. This was arbitrary and capricious."
(The Supreme Court in 2023 ultimately ruled in favor of President Joe Biden, saying the states that sued did not have legal standing.)
Despite the long history of courts' faulting presidents under the APA, various Trump allies, including billionaire Elon Musk, have harshly criticized judges for ruling against the administration, as Trump himself has in the past, raising concerns in some quarters that officials could defy court orders.
'These unlawful injunctions are a continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Tuesday.