William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal
Abstract
In the first week of his second term, President Donald Trump issued multiple executive orders targeting immigrants and transgender people. Additional actions targeting these and other vulnerable groups have already followed. Others may come; more generally, such orders will likely remain a part of the President’s policy agenda and governing style. These actions call for analysis of the legal tools litigants can deploy to challenge them. That call is urgent, as a response not just to the orders already issued, but to others the Administration might promulgate in the future.
One of those tools is equal protection animus. This Article considers the prospects for equal protection animus-based challenges to the actions already taken and those that may follow in the months and years ahead. Relying on the Supreme Court’s surprising revival and regularization of the animus idea in 2020, it applies this evolving doctrine to the Administration’s early actions in the immigration and transgender rights areas. It concludes, tentatively, that animus can play a useful role in equality litigators’ toolkit.
Beyond explaining how the animus idea can assist in challenges to the Administration’s early actions, this Article also provides guidance on how litigators and others can challenge other equality- and rights-infringing actions the Administration may take in the future. It concludes by reflecting on the substantive, political, and rhetorical appropriateness of deploying animus-based arguments in the current national moment.
Repository Citation
William D. Araiza, Animus, Again, 34 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 1 (2025), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol34/iss1/2Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, Supreme Court of the United States Commons