The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ordered the Trump administration to comply with a district court order demanding it release all foreign aid funds frozen as part of President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development on Wednesday.
The Trump administration must now release all of the USAID contract funds frozen by the State Department in order to comply with the original temporary restraining order issued by Judge Amir Ali on Feb. 13. The administration had repeatedly failed to comply with Ali’s order to release the funds, which led him to demand they comply by 11:59 p.m. Feb. 26 or else face sanctions. The Supreme Court stepped in to issue a preliminary stay on the deadline as the court considered the case.
The court, however, did not require the administration to stick to the original deadline and immediately release the funds. Instead, it said the district court should “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.”
This was the first major case that the Supreme Court has ruled on regarding the Trump administration’s actions since Jan. 20. And it came with a stark possibility: the administration being in open violation of a court order.
With the court having decided, the administration must release the funds or be in violation of Ali’s order. The State Department has claimed it is impossible for it to release the frozen funds by Ali’s deadline, largely due to extra bureaucratic processes it created since Trump took office. The administration will now need to bypass the bureaucratic roadblocks that it added.
The case is still ongoing in Ali’s court where he could issue a preliminary injunction soon to extend the restraining order indefinitely.
The administration’s freeze on foreign aid funding has already caused massive damage by denying crucial deliveries of medicine, vaccinations, food and money for everything from hospitals to shelter.
“This will no doubt result in preventable death, destabilization, and threats to national security on a massive scale,” Nicholas Enrich — the acting assistant administrator for global health at USAID, who has been placed on administrative leave— wrote in an internal memo reported on by The New York Times and provided to the court by the plaintiffs.
“As a result of the pause and programming delays, millions of individuals now face heightened risks of preventable diseases such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, TB, and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB),” Enrich wrote in another leaked memo. “Furthermore, setbacks in maternal and child health and nutrition initiatives threaten overall health outcomes in affected regions.”
Millions of people around the world would contract preventable diseases and die thanks to the Trump administration’s aid freeze, Enrich estimated.
Four conservative justices dissented from the decision ordering the administration to comply with the district court’s restraining order. The court’s decision amounted to “judicial hubris” that “imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers,” Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, wrote in dissent.
That “$2 billion penalty,” however, is represented by congressionally appropriated funds that had already been paid out by the grant recipients to contractors. The plaintiffs in the case were mostly seeking to obtain the release of funds to cover expenses they had already spent.
While Alito and the three other conservatives did not discuss any constitutional issues in their dissent, their language appears to indicate a willingness to allow the president to ignore congressional spending directives.
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The district court announced soon after the decision came down that it will hear arguments Thursday on a new deadline for compliance and a preliminary injunction.
