Courts back North Carolina in every resolved challenge to Trump administration, N&O finds

North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson has sued President Donald Trump and his administration roughly 20 times since taking office in 2025, with courts ruling in his favor in seven resolved cases, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.

Most of the lawsuits are jointly filed with other attorneys general, mostly Democrats, from across the country, the newspaper reported. More than half remain ongoing, six are paused through preliminary injunctions, and one was voluntarily dismissed after a June 2025 Supreme Court ruling that states can exclude specific providers from Medicaid coverage.

Jackson told the N&O he has protected more than $1.6 billion in state taxpayer money for education, health care, and disaster relief through the legal challenges.

“I believe in taking a nonpartisan approach to justice,” he said. “Every case we’ve filed against the federal government has met that nonpartisan standard, and that’s why our results have been exceptionally strong.”

Among the resolved cases in which judges ruled for Jackson, the N&O reported, were lawsuits challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Office of Management and Budget for withholding $230 million in food assistance for more than one million North Carolinians during a government shutdown; the Department of Education’s cuts to more than $165 million in public education funds; FEMA’s withholding of $17 million in disaster relief funds; the National Institutes of Health’s cutting of $123 million in state funding for medical and public health research; FEMA’s cancellation of more than $200 million in disaster preparedness grants; the Department of Transportation‘s cancellation of $103 million for electric vehicle charging infrastructure; and a Department of Energy policy limiting federal funds for state projects.

Ongoing litigation includes a joint lawsuit challenging the legality of Trump’s latest tariffs, a challenge to the EPA’s cancellation of the Solar for All grant program — which would have brought North Carolina more than $150 million in solar grants — and a lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting, which Jackson argued could affect deployed military personnel, the N&O reported. Other ongoing cases target the EPA’s rollback of air pollution standards, a $100,000 supplemental fee on employer-sponsored visas for teachers and health care workers in rural areas, and the Department of Education’s termination of a $50 million grant to North Carolina public schools.