The Trump administration on Wednesday suffered its latest in a string of legal defeats, as the Supreme Court blocked its attempt to suspend $2 billion in foreign aid.
In a 5-4 opinion, the court denied the administration’s last-minute request to overturn a federal court order requiring it to begin paying USAID contractors. President Donald Trump froze the USAID funding on his first day in office, prompting the intended recipients of that money to file lawsuits claiming that the president had “illegally and unconscionably” frozen funding allocated by Congress.
The judge in that case, Judge Amir Ali of the Federal District Court in Washington, issued a temporary restraining order in mid-February prohibiting the government from stopping the payments. When the administration still didn’t unfreeze the funds, Judge Ali issued another order last week setting a 36-hour deadline for the money to begin flowing.
In a concise opinion issued Wednesday, the three liberal justices, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, upheld the lower court’s order. They wrote only that Judge Ali should “clarify” exactly how the government needs to comply with the order and consider “the feasibility of any compliance deadlines.”
While the majority opinion was brief, the dissent was anything but.
Writing for the minority, conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote that he was “stunned” by the decision. “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?” he wrote. “The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise.”
Alito called the majority decision a “most unfortunate misstep that rewards an act of judicial hubris and imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers.” Of course, that critique elides the fact that the $2 billion in question is funding already authorized by Congress for work already completed under government contracts.
Perhaps another question Alito and his fellow conservative justices might ask themselves is whether the president has the unchecked power to stiff contractors on a $2 billion bill.
