A Just Security study lists federal court findings of Trump administration noncompliance in 60 cases, offering a measure of legal disputes over the executive branch’s compliance with judges’ orders.
The fifth edition also records 112 cases in which judges expressed distrust of government information or representations, and 145 in which courts found the administration had engaged, or likely engaged, in arbitrary and capricious conduct. The study groups matters by case rather than counting every incident; where a ruling touches multiple categories, that case can be counted in each. Authors Ryan Goodman, Siven Watt and Jake Morganstein-Foley focus on the “presumption of regularity,” a legal principle that assumes government officials performed their duties correctly unless clear evidence shows otherwise.
The study says the presumption can limit examination of facts and prevent discovery. The authors do not advocate a particular scope for applying it in ordinary cases. Their listed first-year figures, for Jan. 20, 2025, through Jan. 19, 2026, were 32 noncompliance cases, 78 involving distrust of government information and 82 with arbitrary-and-capricious findings.
The main totals exclude recent waves of immigration habeas cases, which the authors track separately. That Just Security tracker listed 801 cases as of June 22, 2026, including at least 740 involving noncompliance, at least 150 involving distrust of government information and 14 with arbitrary-and-capricious findings. Those categories can overlap, so the figures do not represent separate groups of cases.
A July 29, 2026, order by U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher found federal defendants in civil contempt in a case involving an asylum settlement. The court’s Aug. 6 opinion described more than 50 confirmed class members whom the government had removed before their asylum applications were decided. Gallagher limited the contempt finding to removals carried out in disregard or ignorance of the defendants’ own identifiers of potential class membership; failures in the wider identification process alone were not enough.
The order directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to enter an alert within two business days after a person is identified to ICE, if no alert already exists. It also required nationwide written guidance within 15 days and compliance reports every two weeks. The court imposed no sanctions specifically under the contempt finding.
