A divided Supreme Court on Wednesday denied the Trump administration’s request to block a lower court order on foreign aid funding, clearing the way for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to restart nearly $2 billion in payments.
Divided Supreme Court says judge can force Trump administration to pay foreign aid
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to halt a judge’s order to restart nearly $2 billion in USAID payments for work that has already been done.
March 5, 2025
The decision drew a sharp dissent from four conservative justices who said a District Court judge in D.C. probably lacks the power to compel the federal government to make such payments.
“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? The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned,” wrote Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.
A federal judge in D.C. had ordered the money to begin flowing last week, after the Trump administration appeared to flout an earlier ruling that said a 90-day freeze on all foreign aid was imposed too hastily and should be lifted for now.
But the government appealed the Feb. 26 deadline, saying it would take weeks longer for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department to resume payments for work completed before Feb. 13.
Wednesday’s decision is the first by the Supreme Court on President Donald Trump’s blitz of executive orders and firings in the opening weeks of his presidency. The administration is already facing more than 100 lawsuits challenging its actions in lower courts, so other rulings are sure to follow.
The justices turned aside arguments by acting solicitor general Sarah M. Harris, who called U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali’s deadline an “impossible order” since it gave officials only about 36 hours to comply. Harris also said the judge exceeded his authority, an argument the Trump administration has made repeatedly as the president seeks to significantly expand executive power.
“Ordering the United States to pay all pending requests under foreign-aid instruments on a timeline of the district court’s choosing—without regard to whether the requests are legitimate, or even due yet— intrudes on the President’s broad foreign-affairs powers and upends the systems the Executive Branch has established to disburse aid,” Harris wrote in a filing Monday.
The lawsuit seeking to restart the funding was brought by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council. They said the Trump administration had defied a temporary restraining order by Ali that initially required payments to begin again in mid-February.
The organizations said the freeze had pushed aid groups to the brink of insolvency, forced layoffs and delayed lifesaving HIV drugs and food assistance to unstable regions worldwide.
“The government comes to this Court with an emergency of its own making,” the health groups wrote in a filing to the justices last week. “It made no effort to comply with the TRO for two weeks.”
A senior USAID official was placed on leave Sunday after circulating memos saying the spending freeze will result in “preventable death, destabilization, and threats to national security on a massive scale.”
In a filing Monday, the global health groups wrote that those memos “further confirm that Defendants have taken no steps toward compliance with this Court’s February 13 TRO and, to the contrary, have actively taken steps to prevent compliance.”
The memos estimate the pause in foreign aid could cause up to 166,000 more malaria deaths annually, 200,000 more cases of polio and 2 million to 3 million more deaths a year from shuttering immunization programs, the filing said.
The Feb. 26 deadline Ali imposed required the government to begin paying for all humanitarian relief work completed before Feb. 13. The Supreme Court was only considering whether to delay the Feb. 26 deadline, not the merits of Ali’s broader temporary restraining order, which remains in effect until March 10. That order bars the government from freezing a broad range of payments and taking other steps to dismantle USAID.
But the global health groups are arguing that the government is ignoring the broader order. They sued after Trump, on his first day in office, paused foreign aid for 90 days. He said he wanted his administration to reevaluate the assistance to determine whether it was in line with his foreign policy agenda.
The Trump administration told Ali that it could continue to put a hold on the funds and trim USAID in spite of his temporary restraining order, based on statutes and regulations that exist separately from Trump’s first-day directive on foreign aid.
An administration spokesman has said a review of foreign aid had identified 5,800 USAID awards worth about $54 billion and 4,100 State Department grants that could be cut.
After a tense hearing on the matter on Feb. 25, Ali told officials to restart funding one day later.
The legal battle over the foreign aid freeze will now continue in the lower courts, where the global health groups have asked for a preliminary injunction — a more permanent stop than a temporary restraining order — against the pause.
The case is the second time the high court has considered one of Trump’s early moves. Last month, the justices put off ruling on the Trump administration’s request to remove the head of an independent watchdog agency as legal wrangling plays out in lower courts.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.