A divided U.S. Supreme Court turned down the Trump administration’s request to freeze billions of dollars in foreign aid that Congress had already approved.
In a 5-4 ruling on Wednesday, the Supreme Court did not say right away when the money had to be released. This meant that the White House could keep arguing about it in lower courts.
The order wasn’t signed, but four conservative justices—Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—didn’t agree with it.
That made five justices the majority: Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Chief Justice John Roberts was also in the majority.
The majority said that since the money had already been spent by the due date set by the court last week, the lower courts should “clarify what obligations the government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order.”
Alito wrote in a strong dissent that he was “stunned” by the court’s decision to let the lower court judge order the administration to unfreeze the foreign aid that was at issue in the case.
He added: “A federal court has many tools to address a party’s supposed nonfeasance. Self-aggrandizement of its jurisdiction is not one of them.”
Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said the ruling was “extremely modest.”
“The unsigned order does not actually require the Trump administration to immediately make up to $2 billion in foreign aid payments; it merely clears the way for the district court to compel those payments, presumably if it is more specific about the contracts that have to be honored,” Vladeck said. “The fact that four justices nevertheless dissented – vigorously – from such a decision is a sign that the Court is going to be divided, perhaps along these exact lines, in many of the more impactful Trump-related cases that are already on their way.”
The appeal was sent to the high court in just a few days, which is very fast for the federal judiciary. It is the second case that the justices have heard about Trump’s efforts to increase power in the executive branch and change the government in big ways since he took office in January.
The case is mostly about the billions of dollars in foreign aid that Trump froze in January from the State Department and the US Agency for International Development. He did this to cut spending and get those agencies to work with his plans.
A number of nonprofits that depend on the money for global health and other programs filed a lawsuit, saying that the actions of the administration took away Congress’s power to control government spending and went against a federal law that says how agencies should make decisions.
In a brief released on Friday, the groups said that the actions of the administration were “devastating.”
These people told the court that the money “supports US interests abroad and makes the lives of millions of people around the world better and, in many cases, saves their lives.”
The groups said, “This helps stop problems like disease and instability across the ocean before they reach our shores.”
Amir Ali, a US District Judge, ordered on February 13 that a lot of the money keep going while he looked into the case. A few days later, the plaintiffs said that the administration was still not following the order and blocking the spending. Ali then told the Trump administration that they had to spend the money by Wednesday at midnight.
Former President Joe Biden chose Ali to be a judge.
In a last-minute emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration asked the court to at least put the case on hold for a few days. The government said that the administration was making “substantial efforts” to look over payment requests and spend the money, but it wasn’t possible for them to do it quickly enough to meet Ali’s deadline.
The groups that sued didn’t agree with that explanation. They said that some politically appointed officials in the administration “are refusing to authorize essentially any payments.”
“The government has not taken ‘any meaningful steps’ to come into compliance,” the groups said a Supreme Court filing.
Roberts, by himself, gave the administration a short reprieve on Wednesday. He issued what is called a “administrative stay,” which put the case on hold so that both sides could send in written arguments. The chief justice is in charge of emergency cases that come up at the federal appeals court in Washington, DC.
The AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition is an organization based in New York that works to speed up HIV prevention. The Global Health Council is an organization based in Washington, DC that represents other groups that run health programs.
In court papers for the case, the Trump administration said that it wants to end more than 90% of the USAID foreign aid awards.
A government report said, “In total, nearly 5,800 USAID awards were terminated and more than 500 USAID awards were retained.”
The filing said, “The total ceiling value of the retained awards is about $57 billion.”
Along with ending the USAID awards, the government told a lower court that “approximately 4,100 State awards were terminated and approximately 2,700 State awards were retained.” This meant that the State Department awards were ended.
Around the world, aid programs have stopped working because billions of dollars in aid have been frozen and are being looked over. It also comes at a time when the Trump administration has either fired or put on leave most of USAID’s staff.