U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan has issued a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration’s federal funds freeze, extending a hold on the freeze while calling the government’s attempt to evade judicial review “disingenuous.”
After a hearing Monday, the District of Columbia judge wrote that “the balance of the equities and public interest heavily favor granting Plaintiffs’ request,” referring to the nonprofit groups that brought a lawsuit against the administration. In explaining her restraining order, the Joe Biden appointee wrote: “Rather than taking a measured approach to identify purportedly wasteful spending, Defendants cut the fuel supply to a vast, complicated, nationwide machine — seemingly without any consideration for the consequences of that decision.”
AliKhan’s order follows her temporary order last week halting the freeze, as well as an order in a separate federal case against the Trump administration on the subject. In that other case, in Rhode Island, U.S. District Judge John McConnell issued a temporary restraining order while likewise criticizing the administration for overstepping. The D.C. case was brought by nonprofits and the Rhode Island case by Democratic state attorneys general.
McConnell, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote on Friday that the Trump administration’s executive action “unilaterally suspends the payment of federal funds to the States and others simply by choosing to do so, no matter the authorizing or appropriating statute, the regulatory regime, or the terms of the grant itself.” He wrote that the administration “cites no legal authority allowing it to do so; indeed, no federal law would authorize the Executive’s unilateral action here.”
In her opinion Monday, AliKhan observed that evidence presented by the nonprofit plaintiffs paints “a stark picture of nationwide panic in the wake of the funding freeze.” She noted that organizations “with every conceivable mission — healthcare, scientific research, emergency shelters, and more — were shut out of funding portals or denied critical resources … Many of the organizations rely on federal funding to pay their workers, meaning that the freeze forced them to send staff home or close their doors.” After her temporary order last week, the government said it had withdrawn a memorandum that had led the plaintiffs to bring suit. The government defendants argued that this withdrawal should’ve ended the matter, but the judge was unpersuaded. Writing that the government was trying to “overcome a judicially imposed obstacle without actually ceasing the challenged conduct,” AliKhan then said that she “can think of few things more disingenuous.” 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 Donald Trump’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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