What It Takes for States to Sue the Federal Government—And Why They Usually Lose

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A federal judge in Minnesota denied the state’s request to halt a massive immigration enforcement operation. The court acknowledged the state might have a constitutional case—but said no anyway.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez rejected Minnesota’s bid to stop Operation Metro Surge—a deployment of roughly 3,000 federal agents to Minneapolis and St. Paul. The court acknowledged the operation’s devastating effects on healthcare delivery, schools, businesses, and immigrant communities. But under current legal standards, the court couldn’t stop it.

This is how states lose lawsuits against the federal government. Not because courts disagree with their legal arguments. Not because the harm isn’t real. But because a series of procedural barriers, courts giving the federal government the benefit of the doubt, and missing legal standards combine to make relief nearly impossible—even when courts believe constitutional violations are occurring.

The Four-Part Test That States Almost Never Pass

To get an emergency court order to stop something immediately, you need to clear four hurdles.

You must show: (1) you’re likely to win the case when it reaches final judgment. (2) You’ll suffer damage that money can’t fix without relief. (3) The harm to you outweighs the harm to them. (4) Stopping this helps the public more than allowing it.

Minnesota failed multiple prongs. But the first one—likelihood of success—was fatal.

The argument was straightforward: Operation Metro Surge violates the Tenth Amendment because it’s designed to coerce the state into repealing its sanctuary city policies. That’s textbook anti-commandeering doctrine, the rule that the federal government can’t force states to do its job.

But the federal government had a plausible alternative explanation: sanctuary policies make enforcement harder, so more agents are rationally needed to achieve the same goals. Not punishment. Compensation for the difficulty.

When both interpretations seem plausible, courts won’t grant relief. The “likelihood of success” standard requires showing you’ll probably win at trial, not that you might. If the other side has decent counterarguments—even if your arguments are also good—you lose the emergency court order.

Proving Improper Motivation Is Nearly Impossible

Here’s what makes this particularly frustrating: the Trump administration didn’t hide its intent. Officials made public statements connecting the enforcement surge to sanctuary policies. The “you do this, we stop that” was fairly explicit.

But proving improper motivation in court is different from recognizing it in the real world. Federal law enforcement decisions get enormous deference from courts, who are reluctant to second-guess executive branch judgments about resource deployment.

Translation: Even if we suspect retaliation, the government’s stated rationale isn’t obviously fake. At this stage, with limited evidence and no full trial, courts won’t make definitive findings about federal motivation.

This creates a catch-22. States can’t wait years for a full trial because the harm is happening now—agents are conducting arrests, communities are disrupted, businesses are closing. But they can’t get relief because proving improper motivation requires the kind of evidence development that only happens through the process where both sides share evidence and present their case.

The procedural mechanism designed to handle emergencies quickly becomes the barrier to obtaining relief.

When Courts Acknowledge Harm But Won’t Stop It

Judge Menendez’s opinion contains passages that read like they’re building toward an injunction. She noted disruptions to healthcare, education, and economic activity.

Then she explained why none of that mattered for the injunction analysis.

The harm, she reasoned, could theoretically be remedied through money damages later. Yes, that would take years. Yes, some harms—psychological trauma, community trust destroyed—aren’t fixable with cash. But legal doctrine treats harm as damage that money can’t fix only if it’s genuinely impossible to compensate after the fact. Courts have increasingly assumed that states can be made whole through damages, even when that’s obviously inadequate.

Meanwhile, any restriction on federal operations counts as damage that money can’t fix to the government. Recent Supreme Court decisions have established that hampering the government’s ability to enforce its policies is itself an injury that can’t be fixed with money—one that justifies denying injunctions even when the other side faces serious harm.

Notice the asymmetry. The documented injuries are treated as potentially compensable later. The federal government’s interest in maintaining capacity is treated as inherently beyond monetary compensation. This isn’t neutral doctrine—it’s a thumb on the scale.

The Rare Cases Where States Win

States do occasionally win emergency court orders against federal action. But those victories follow a pattern that this case doesn’t fit.

Environmental cases sometimes succeed because courts have developed clear legal standards for reviewing agency decisions under statutes like the Clean Air Act. When Massachusetts challenged the EPA, courts could apply established administrative law principles to determine whether the agency acted reasonably.

Immigration enforcement is different. The federal government’s authority over it is constitutionally broad and judicially protected. The Supreme Court has made clear that this is clearly the federal government’s job, where state interests are secondary.

The injunctions that succeeded during Trump’s first term typically involved clear statutory violations or executive orders that obviously exceeded presidential authority. Those cases had workable legal standards—bright lines courts could draw with confidence.

But what’s the legal standard for when a federal operation becomes “too large” or “too aggressive”? That’s a concession that the anti-commandeering doctrine, while theoretically applicable, lacks the practical tools for addressing large-scale operations that pressure states without technically commandeering their resources.

The Missing Limiting Principle

Here’s what the ruling doesn’t establish: any clear line for when federal enforcement crosses into unconstitutional coercion.

Three thousand agents is apparently not enough. Would ten thousand be? What if the federal deployment matched the size of local police forces rather than tripling them? What if officials made even more explicit statements about using enforcement as political retaliation?

The opinion provides no answers. And that silence matters, because it means future courts facing similar cases will cite this decision’s uncertainty as reason for their own restraint. The absence of a limiting principle becomes self-perpetuating.

This isn’t accidental. It reflects a judicial philosophy that treats any restriction on executive enforcement as presumptively harmful to government operations. Recent developments in the rules about when courts can order someone to stop doing something have made courts increasingly reluctant to second-guess executive branch decisions, particularly in this area.

The result is a legal environment where courts can acknowledge serious constitutional concerns while simultaneously refusing to act on them. Theory and practice diverge. The Tenth Amendment remains good law in principle. It doesn’t reliably constrain federal operations in practice.

What Happens Next

The lawsuit continues. Minnesota will conduct discovery, depose federal officials, and build a record for trial or a court decision without a full trial. In theory, the state could still win—establishing that Operation Metro Surge violated the anti-commandeering doctrine and obtaining a final judgment that would set an example for future cases beyond any emergency court order.

In practice, that process takes years. By the time the case reaches final judgment, Operation Metro Surge may have ended through political decision rather than legal compulsion. The practical relief sought—stopping the operation now—is off the table.

But it also signals recognition that federal court won’t provide rapid relief.

What Other States Are Learning

Attorneys general in states with sanctuary policies and large immigrant populations are responding to aggressive federal enforcement with various strategies. While public reporting shows individual state actions rather than coordinated multi-state monitoring of Minnesota’s specific case, states like California, Illinois, and New York are independently evaluating their own legal and administrative options for addressing similar federal operations.

The denial sends a clear message: litigation challenging the scale of federal operations won’t yield relief, even when courts acknowledge constitutional concerns and documented harm.

This is pushing states toward alternative strategies. Some are establishing accountability commissions to document federal abuses and preserve evidence for potential damages claims. Others are exploring whether prosecutors could charge federal agents with law violations when they exceed constitutional bounds—though that approach faces its own substantial barriers under federal law protection that shields federal agents from prosecution.

These are acknowledgments that federal court orders won’t reliably restrain federal operations.

There’s also a strategic lesson about litigation framing. Minnesota pursued a pure Tenth Amendment challenge focused on sovereignty. But states might have better success framing similar challenges as civil rights cases protecting individual constitutional rights—Fourth Amendment privacy violations, First Amendment protest rights. Courts have more developed doctrinal tools for protecting individual rights than for enforcing limits on federal power over states.

When courts find evidence of racial profiling or excessive force, they’re more willing to intervene than when states claim abstract sovereignty violations. Individual rights claims come with clearer legal standards and less deference to executive discretion.

The Deference Problem

To understand why states typically lose these challenges, you need to understand the special status this area holds in federal law.

It’s constitutionally a federal domain. Congress has broad specific powers granted by the Constitution over naturalization, and the Supreme Court has recognized powers the president has by virtue of being president over foreign relations. When courts review decisions, they do so knowing this is clearly federal territory.

That jurisdictional reality shapes everything. When the argument is that Operation Metro Surge violates sovereignty, courts hear that argument against a backdrop of established federal supremacy. The federal government doesn’t have authority to enforce the law—it has authority that’s largely immune from interference.

Federal statutes also sharply restrict judicial authority to stop the deportation of immigrants from the country. While this particular bar doesn’t directly apply to challenges to operations, it reflects broader congressional and judicial skepticism toward using courts to constrain enforcement.

Judge Menendez’s reluctance to “take a side in the debate about the purpose behind Operation Metro Surge” reflects this. Courts give extra deference in this particular area. In other policy contexts—civil rights, environmental protection—courts are willing to make factual findings about agency motivation. But here, they’re more deferential to executive branch claims about necessity.

This isn’t neutral. It’s a choice about which government interests deserve protection and which harms courts are willing to remedy.

Why the Procedural Barriers Matter More Than the Constitutional Questions

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Minnesota might be right on the constitutional merits. Operation Metro Surge might genuinely violate the anti-commandeering doctrine. A judge or jury deciding the facts with a full evidentiary record might conclude that the operation was designed to coerce policy changes rather than simply enforce federal law.

But that doesn’t matter for the emergency court order, because the procedural barriers are too high.

The four-part test requires clearing multiple hurdles simultaneously. The “likelihood of success” standard demands near-certainty at a stage when evidence is incomplete. The requirement for damage that money can’t fix assumes injuries are compensable through damages while treating any restriction on federal enforcement as inherently beyond monetary compensation. The “balance of equities” analysis weights federal interests heavily while treating sovereignty concerns as abstract.

These aren’t neutral procedural rules. They’re choices about how much deference courts owe to executive action and how skeptically they should view requests to restrain government operations.

The result is a system where knowing the constitutional law isn’t enough. States need to satisfy procedural standards that have become increasingly difficult to meet, particularly when challenging federal law enforcement. The emergency court order mechanism, designed to handle emergencies quickly, has become a barrier to relief even in cases where courts acknowledge serious harm.

How the Legal Rules About Federal Versus State Power Work in Practice

The case has implications beyond enforcement. It demonstrates that states cannot rely on federal courts as a primary mechanism for restraining federal operations they oppose—at least not through relief.

This shifts power toward executive decisions and away from judicial review. If states understand they cannot obtain orders against large-scale federal operations, they may reduce litigation investment and focus instead on legislative solutions or political pressure.

It also reveals the gap between federalism doctrine in theory and federalism protection in practice. The Tenth Amendment remains good law. The anti-commandeering doctrine is established precedent. But the practical tools for enforcing those principles—particularly emergency court orders—have been weakened by procedural doctrines and deference standards that make relief nearly impossible.

Judge Menendez’s opinion is legally sound under current doctrine. That’s precisely the problem. The doctrine itself has evolved to make it extraordinarily difficult for states to obtain relief against federal operations, even when courts believe constitutional violations may be occurring.

The case illustrates how constitutional rights can be rendered practically unenforceable through procedural barriers rather than overturning. The Tenth Amendment doesn’t need to be overruled if courts can simply decline to enforce it through the mechanisms that would provide meaningful relief.

The Uncomfortable Reality

States usually lose lawsuits against the federal government not because their legal arguments are wrong, but because the procedural and doctrinal barriers to success are formidable and getting higher.

Minnesota presented evidence of harm. The court acknowledged it. Minnesota offered a constitutional theory. The court found it plausible. But plausible isn’t enough when the standard is “likely to succeed” and the defendant is the federal government in an area where judicial deference runs deep.

The denial doesn’t resolve whether Operation Metro Surge violates the Constitution. It means Minnesota won’t get relief while that question is litigated over the next several years. By the time there’s a final answer, the operation may be over.

That’s the real lesson for states considering similar litigation. Federal courts can acknowledge your harm, credit your legal theory, and still conclude they cannot intervene. The gap between recognizing constitutional violations and stopping them has widened considerably. Until courts develop clearer limiting principles on federal operations—or become less deferential to executive decisions—states will continue to lose these battles, even when courts believe they have a point.

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