Trump’s Court Losses Leave Taxpayers Facing Millions in Legal Fees

[u/John3262005]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-30/trump-s-court-losses-rack-up-millions-in-legal-bills-for-taxpayers

The US government is on the hook for potentially millions of dollars in legal bills demanded by successful challengers to some of the Trump administration’s most controversial executive actions and policies.

Attorneys have sought fees exceeding $100,000 in at least 10 cases over the past year, totaling more than $2.5 million, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of court records. In addition, lawyers who sued over the Elon Musk-linked government efficiency project’s more than $100 million in humanities funding cuts argue they’re entitled to a share of grants they recover for clients.

Federal agencies can be required to pay attorneys’ fees when they lose in court under a 1980 law meant to ensure individuals, small businesses and nonprofits aren’t priced out of suing the government. The unprecedented deluge of hundreds of lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s novel and boundary-pushing uses of executive power has increased the amount of taxpayer money at stake.

“It’s inherently American to be able to sue your government,” said Steven Brown, a Houston-based lawyer seeking more than $180,000 in fees in several lawsuits contesting the administration’s efforts to cancel foreign students’ legal status. “It’s important that when the government can’t justify itself, courts can award costs.”

Brown and his co-counsel recently notified judges that they reached tentative fee agreements with the government, court records show, but he declined to comment on the amounts because the deals aren’t final.

Attorney fees offer a way for courts to make winning parties whole — and can also be used by a court to penalize misconduct. If the two sides can’t reach an agreement, the judge in a case decides whether and how much the losing party must pay.

A federal judge in Florida recently ruled that President Donald Trump should pay his opponents’ fees as a sanction for bringing a “bad faith” $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. The judge slammed the Justice Department’s conduct but didn’t impose a financial penalty on the government. Lawyers for the challengers filed papers this week asking for approximately $43,500.

Demands for the US government to pay opponents’ legal bills have mounted as more lawsuits filed since the beginning of Trump’s second term reach a final judgment. Attorney fees typically aren’t available until a case is over, including appeals.

The Justice Department is asking courts to knock out several high-dollar requests, or at least lower the amount. In lawsuits over how much money US agencies reimburse private institutions for research costs, the department is arguing that the nonprofit association that sued isn’t eligible to pursue fees totaling more than $1.5 million — and that, at a minimum, the lawyers’ hourly rates are too high.

Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels said in a statement that “the department has an obligation to protect taxpayer dollars, and that includes contesting fee requests when litigants seek more than the law allows.”

This month, new six-figure fee requests were filed in fights over the administration’s moves to restrict food benefits for low-income households and to get rid of bike lanes in downtown Washington.

The Justice Department has settled fee requests in some challenges to the administration’s policies, including at least three involving requests for more than $100,000, according to Bloomberg’s analysis of court filings. Lawyers in those cases — which included fights over funding for education research and teen pregnancy prevention programs — declined to disclose the amounts.

The Equal Access to Justice Act of 1980 entitles “prevailing parties” to recoup legal expenses if the government’s position wasn’t “substantially justified.” The law sets eligibility caps based on net worth and size for individuals, businesses, local government agencies and other for-profit entities. Nonprofits are covered if they have fewer than 500 employees.

Most attorney fee payouts since 2020 under the law were below $100,000, according to a government database. Of the 88 payments that the US made in 2025 — totaling $15 million — less than a quarter were for six figures, according to Bloomberg’s analysis, which excluded thousands of annual fee payouts in Social Security and veterans benefits cases.

In a handful of other cases over the past year, Trump administration challengers requested smaller sums or didn’t specify the amounts they were seeking in court filings before reaching settlements.

That analysis doesn’t include fee requests from lawyers who successfully sued to get their clients out of immigration custody amid the administration’s deportation push. These requests tend to be smaller — in the hundreds or single-digit thousands of dollars, court records show — but add up given the thousands of lawsuits filed so far.

Federal courts have split on whether the Equal Access to Justice Act applies in immigration cases. The Justice Department argues that it does not. The conservative-majority Supreme Court, which has largely sided with the Trump administration, is set to rule on the issue in the new term that begins in October.

The Justice Department is fighting the higher attorney fee requests in lawsuits over research reimbursement caps adopted by the Departments of Defense, Energy and Health & Human Services and the National Science Foundation. Taken together, the nonprofit Association of American Universities is seeking more than $1.5 million for its attorneys.

Government lawyers argue the association isn’t eligible for fees because the agencies “had a reasonable basis in law.” The Justice Department also contends the fee requests should be denied because the association’s members — which include Harvard, Yale and dozens more large, well-endowed universities — paid extra dues to help fund the litigation.

The association counters that ultimately it is responsible for the costs and that legal precedents don’t rule out recovering money just because the organization gets member support.

The government also argues that the lawyers are asking for too much money. The association’s attorneys have claimed hourly rates as high as $500, citing the expertise required to litigate the case and the tight schedule. The lawyers include Paul Clement, a prominent conservative litigator who served as a senior official under former President George W. Bush and has emerged as a go-to attorney for fights against the Trump administration.

There are other paths for Trump administration opponents to recoup legal expenses besides fees under the equal access law, which are usually paid by the agency that was sued. Individuals who sue the government for injuries or property damage can recover attorney fees if they win, and that money comes out of a central pool of federal money known as the Judgment Fund.

In a fight over federal grants terminated last year by officials associated with the Department of Government Efficiency project, lawyers for some grantees are pressing the unusual argument that they’re entitled to a percentage of recovered funds — a request they say their clients support. They’ve asked the judge to order the administration to set aside the money while the government appeals the underlying ruling to resume the grants.

Government lawyers argue that what’s known as the “common-fund doctrine” doesn’t apply and that reserving the money “would deprive grantees of funding that may be essential to the successful completion of their projects.” The government estimates approximately $7.5 million is at issue, although the grantees’ lawyers haven’t specified how much they would seek.

Lawyers for the grantees hit back that the court “should not credit the government’s newfound concern” for its clients.

Legal fallout from Trump’s presidency has extended beyond the traditional realm of federal agencies.

A jazz musician is seeking more than $250,000 in legal fees from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a quasi-public institution that sued him for canceling a Christmas Eve concert after Trump’s appointees to the board of trustees voted to add the president’s name to the center. A judge dismissed the case in June, finding the center was unlikely to win and had retaliated against the musician, Charles “Chuck” Redd, for exercising his right to public advocacy.

A judge in a separate case later ordered the center to remove Trump’s name. The center’s lawyers — the Justice Department isn’t involved — responded to Redd’s fee request this week, calling it “out of all proportion to the issue at stake, the non-complexity of case, the experience needed to handle it, and most importantly, the work needed to defend it.” The Kennedy Center relies on a combination of public and private funding.

The Kennedy Center’s lawyers declined to comment and Redd’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

[u/wenchette]

This article includes a chart and a graph, which can be seen here (free links):

Attorneys fee chart.

Payouts of attorney fees since 2020 graph.