The high court in a 5–4 decision declined to block a judge’s order to release $2 billion in foreign aid payments.
The Supreme Court on March 5 ruled 5–4 that the Trump administration must follow through with the payment of $2 billion in foreign aid.
The new ruling was issued after the nation’s highest court on Feb. 26 temporarily blocked a judge’s order requiring the payments be made. The court did not explain its decision.
The Supreme Court directed the federal district court that ordered the federal government to resume payments to “clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines.”
Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh.
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali issued a temporary restraining order last month compelling both the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department to restore funding for contracts that predated Jan. 20 but were frozen by the Trump administration.
The plaintiffs challenging the freeze told the judge that the government was slow in fulfilling the order, leading Ali to order the payments to resume.
The AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, the lead respondent, said in a brief filed with the Supreme Court that recipients of foreign-assistance funding and stakeholder associations challenged the federal government’s “foreign-assistance freeze as an unconstitutional exercise of presidential power in contravention of congressional will and as an arbitrary and capricious agency action.”
By filing the emergency application, the government came to the Supreme Court “with an emergency of its own making,” it said.
After President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 issued an executive order “directing an immediate halt to thousands of congressionally funded foreign-assistance projects across the globe,” federal agencies “issued wave after wave of stop-work orders, withheld the funding necessary for countless American businesses and nonprofits to maintain operations and pursue their missions, and upended the reliance interests of communities worldwide that depend on congressionally authorized foreign assistance,” the brief states.
Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris had told the Supreme Court in the government’s emergency application that the judge had given the Trump administration only about 30 hours to comply with his order, making compliance difficult.
The deadline “moved all the goalposts,” she wrote.
“It is not tailored to any actual payment deadlines associated with respondents’ invoices or drawn-down requests, or anyone else’s. And it has thrown what should be an orderly review by the government into chaos,” Harris wrote.
“Worse, this order exposes the government to the risk of contempt proceedings and other sanctions,” she added.
Alito expressed shock at the court’s new ruling.
“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” the justice wrote in his dissent.
“The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.”
The Supreme Court’s decision in this case is “a most unfortunate misstep that rewards an act of judicial hubris and imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers,” Alito wrote.
