Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday night temporarily froze an order by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that would have required the Trump administration to pay nearly $2 billion in foreign-aid reimbursements for work that has already been done. In a brief order issued just a few hours before the midnight deadline for the Trump administration to make those payments, Roberts signaled that the court is likely to move quickly on the Trump administration’s request to lift the order by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, as he instructed the plaintiffs in the case to respond to that request by noon on Friday.
The dispute stems from an executive order issued by President Donald Trump last month declaring that foreign-aid funds “are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.” Therefore, Trump directed, going forward, foreign-aid funds should not be disbursed “in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President,” and he instructed agencies to “immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries” and the organizations and contractors that implement those projects to give the agencies time to conduct a review of their foreign-aid programs.
Following this executive order, Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed a pause on foreign-aid programs funded by or through both the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The plaintiffs, groups that either receive or have members that receive foreign-aid funds, went to federal court in Washington, D.C., where they contended that the decision to pause foreign-aid funds violated both the federal law governing administrative agencies and the Constitution.
On Feb. 13, Ali issued an order that barred the State Department and USAID from suspending foreign-aid payments. And 12 days later, on Feb. 25, he ordered the agencies to pay contractors and grant recipients by 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 26 for work that had already been done before he issued his Feb. 13 order.
Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris came to the Supreme Court on Wednesday. She asked the justices to do two things: First, act immediately to temporarily pause Ali’s order before the midnight deadline for the State Department to make the payments; and, second, eventually lift the order altogether.
Harris told the court that Ali’s order “effectively allows a single federal district court to supervise the federal government’s contracting decisions regarding foreign aid—an area where the Executive Branch ordinarily has the broadest discretion.” Moreover, she added, Ali did not even have the power to issue such an order, because claims “that the government owes money under its contracts and other funding instruments” can only be brought in an entirely different court, the Court of Federal Claims.
Harris contended that “the government is committed to paying legitimate claims for work that was properly completed pursuant to intact obligations and supported by proper documentation.” But, she continued, what “the government cannot do is pay arbitrarily determined demands on an arbitrary timeline of the district court’s choosing or according to extra-contractual rules that the court has devised.”
In an order released to reporters shortly before 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday night, Roberts granted Harris’s request and put Ali’s order on hold temporarily – a procedure known as an “administrative stay,” which is intended to give the court time to consider a request for emergency action. He directed the plaintiffs to respond to the Trump administration’s application by noon on Friday.
This post is also published on SCOTUSblog.
