President Donald Trump has used his new powers to dismiss a slew of lawsuits filed under former President Joe Biden, including challenges to state abortion bans, allegations of racism in police and fire departments, environmental and anti-whistleblower cases, and various business-related disputes. Meanwhile, he has largely left Biden-era antitrust lawsuits untouched.
The Trump administration took steps as recently as this week to drop a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s abortion ban that only permits the procedures when necessary to save the life of the mother, or in cases of rape or incest. The Biden administration tried to circumvent the state ban with its lawsuit that argued the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) required doctors to provide abortions in cases when they are needed to prevent serious health consequences, not just the life of the mother.
“Democrats’ abortion extremism cost them the election,” said Katie Daniel, Director of Legal Affairs & Policy Counsel at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “With President Trump and a new administration in charge, Biden’s weaponization of the federal government is over — no more lawfare. The will of the people is clear and activist judges must not interfere.”
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Multiple federal civil rights cases revolving around hiring discrimination have also been dropped under Trump. The Department of Justice (DOJ) said it intends to drop a 2023 case alleging anti-immigrant hiring practices at Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Additionally, several federal civil rights lawsuits accusing police and fire departments of racial discrimination based on their provision of certain physical fitness tests and other requirements like credit checks have also been dropped.
“American communities deserve firefighters and police officers to be chosen for their skill and dedication to public safety — not to meet DEI quotas,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement after dismissing the lawsuits that had been levied against multiple jurisdictions around the country.
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A former DOJ civil rights attorney, Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky said that in one of the cases against a fire department in Cobb County, Georgia, a judge refused to grant a settlement proposed by the Biden administration due to a lack of evidence proving physical fitness tests and credit report checks are racially discriminatory toward minorities. Spakovsky noted that settlements are typically approved by judges, but the one in Cobb County sought to set up racial hiring quotas that the judge likened to “a racial spoils system,” he said.
“Here’s a direct quote from the judge: ‘The court will not approve of an agreement which may violate the rights of others without a sufficient evidentiary basis to show that such race-based action is warranted,’” Spakovsky said.
“The broad scope of all of these dropped civil rights cases,” he concluded, “is that they are throwing out the ones — in my opinion — that call on defendants to violate federal laws against discrimination.”
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Two other high-profile lawsuits recently dropped by the Trump administration include a Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency case against local Louisiana regulators and the synthetic rubber manufacturer Denka, which alleged failure to adequately protect the predominantly minority community near its plant from cancer risks linked to air pollution.
Another dropped case involved a medical whistleblower, Dr. Eithan Haim, who faced prosecution from Biden’s DOJ after he leaked documents to the media revealing Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston was performing transgender medical procedures on minors, even after it said it had stopped complying with new state regulations.
Trump has also dropped a number of consumer protection and cryptocurrency lawsuits, but has done little in the way of disrupting the Biden administration’s antitrust enforcement, something tech professionals were expecting after the last administration challenged Big Tech companies aggressively for allegedly building monopolies.
“It’s a big plus for the crypto and fintech sector as a whole, because you just see them celebrating, like you see social posts online of a lot of these executives at those companies that just missed lawsuits who are really happy,” said Kison Patel, a financial tech entrepreneur and the host of “M&A Science,” a podcast about mergers and acquisitions. “It seems like there’s going to be less scrutiny and regulations around that sector.”
Patel added that while mergers and acquisitions were expected to ramp up this year, he isn’t so sure anymore considering the approach Trump has signaled towards antitrust enforcement.
“I think there’s still a lot to watch in the antitrust area,” said Patel, who pointed to a new case the Federal Trade Commission has brought against a medical device company on antitrust grounds. “But, the take home is there doesn’t appear to be a big shift in position in the realm of regulations around antitrust.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and the Justice Department for comment on this story, but did not hear back by press time.
