how many lawsuits has obama filed as president

Obama did not file lawsuits as president in any meaningful personal sense; the relevant question is usually about how often the Obama administration was sued. Reporting from 2020 says state attorneys general sued his administration 78 times over his two terms.

Why this question is tricky

People often mix up:

• lawsuits filed by Obama personally , and
• lawsuits filed against the Obama administration.

Those are very different things. The number most often cited in news coverage is the number of times the administration was sued, not a count of suits Obama himself initiated.

Related figures

• Texas sued the federal government at least 48 times during Obama’s presidency, according to a Texas Tribune analysis.

• FOIA-related lawsuits against federal agencies also rose during the Obama years, with one report citing 2,609 FOIA lawsuits filed from 2009 to 2015.

Bottom line

If you mean lawsuits Obama filed himself , there isn’t a standard public count because presidents generally do not personally file lawsuits as part of governing. If you mean lawsuits filed against his administration , one widely cited figure is 78.