A federal appeals court panel declined on Thursday to rehear a case challenging the Trump administration’s bid to withhold billions of dollars in foreign aid but offered a narrow way for the group of contractors and nonprofit organizations to continue their legal challenge in a lower court.
The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied a rehearing weeks after a three-judge panel on the court allowed the Trump administration to freeze the billions in foreign aid funds approved by Congress, reversing a lower district court’s previous ruling. The decision marked a victory for the Trump administration, days after it asked the Supreme Court to affirm the appeals court panel’s Aug. 13 ruling to keep the funds frozen, with the full appeals court’s Thursday order allowing the panel’s judgment to be affirmed for now.
The ruling from the full D.C. Circuit bench provided a narrow path for the legal challenge to proceed, with Judge Brad Garcia writing in an opinion that the ruling from the panel was “revised” to allow a challenge under the Administrative Procedure Act to proceed in the lower court.
“Now, however, the panel has revised its opinion in a way that allows that claim to proceed. That claim (and any other remaining claims) may be litigated expeditiously in the district court,” Garcia, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, wrote in an opinion “respecting” the court’s decision.
The case will now return to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where Judge Amir Ali, a Biden appointee, can hear the claims via the narrow legal path spelled out by the higher court. Ali previously ruled against the Trump administration in the case, but the ruling was reversed 2-1 by the panel on the D.C. Circuit.
SUPREME COURT FRUSTRATED BY LOWER COURT OVERREACHES
The lawsuit is one of several aimed at preventing the Trump administration from slashing foreign aid, including through the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The main arguments against the administration’s freezing of foreign aid stem from claims of unlawful impoundment of funds set aside by Congress for the executive branch to spend. The administration has maintained that being forced to spend the foreign aid funds while litigation continues would inflict significant irreparable harm.
“They cannot claim irreparable harm from the unavailability of certain funding streams when they have no entitlement to those funds anyway,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in his petition to the Supreme Court earlier this week. “They simply want to compete for foreign-aid awards. But even under the injunction, they have no guarantee of getting a penny, making it all the more incongruous for them to effectively commandeer the spending of billions of dollars.”