The Supreme Court will let the Trump administration withhold $4 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid, in the Republican-appointed majority’s latest shadow docket win delivered to President Donald Trump.
The order Friday was issued over dissent from the court’s three Democratic appointees, who wrote that “the effect of its ruling is to allow the Executive to cease obligating $4 billion in funds that Congress appropriated for foreign aid, and that will now never reach its intended recipients.”
In a brief order, the majority said the government met the standard for urgent preliminary relief, though it emphasized that Friday’s order “should not be read as a final determination on the merits.” In her dissent for the three Democratic appointees, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that she appreciated “that the majority refrains from offering a definitive view of this dispute and the questions raised in it,” but she nonetheless took stock of the weighty consequences of the order, arguing that the result “conflicts with the separation of powers.”
Continuing her criticism of the majority’s actions and how it takes them on the emergency docket, Kagan wrote that emergency relief “should be sparingly given,” as she noted that “every such award disrupts the usual process of judicial review.”
On Sept. 8, the administration appealed to Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency appeals from Washington courts, seeking immediate relief from an order to pay certain congressionally appropriated funding. Plaintiffs who had sued the administration opposed such high court relief, writing that the government was only being ordered to comply with the law, and that granting even temporary relief could “result in the impoundment of billions of dollars in funds.”
Roberts nonetheless granted that temporary relief a day later, issuing what’s known as an administrative stay while the full court considered the issue. That fuller consideration led to Friday’s order. Opposing the administration’s urgent appeal, the plaintiff groups wrote Sept. 12 that any emergency is one of “the government’s own making, as it has been under an obligation to spend the appropriated funds for specified purposes since at least March 2024.” In a final reply brief, the administration implored the justices to “stop the district court’s interference in a quintessentially political — and ongoing — interbranch process.” In a previous round of this litigation in March, the justices split 5-4 in backing U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s order over what was then the administration’s latest attempt to withhold billions in foreign aid. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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