Supreme Court rejects Trump on USAID foreign-aid freeze

Greg Stohr, Bloomberg News on Mar 5, 2025

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow to President Donald Trump’s foreign-aid freeze, reinstating a lower court order that requires the quick disbursement of as much as $2 billion owed to contractors for already completed work.

Over four dissents, the justices on Wednesday rejected Trump’s request to toss out the order, which affects money owed by the U.S. Agency for International Development and State Department. In its one-paragraph order, the majority told a federal trial judge to reset the timeline for paying the money since his original deadline has now passed.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberals in the majority. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh dissented. Alito wrote for the group that he was “stunned” by the decision.

Humanitarian groups say the money is urgently needed. They say the freeze is upending hundreds of projects, forcing USAID partner groups to lay off or furlough thousands of U.S. workers and putting people who depend on the assistance at risk of disease and death.

The Supreme Court action hints at a willingness to serve as a check on Trump as he asserts sweeping power to overhaul the government and slash spending even in areas where Congress has appropriated money. The decision also suggests the court in at least some cases is prepared to stand behind trial judges who conclude the administration might be violating the law.

The order is the court’s first significant move on Trump’s push since he was sworn in on Jan. 20. More than 100 lawsuits have been filed in an effort to rein in Trump.

In an order last week, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali gave the administration 36 hours to pay for work performed before Feb. 13. Ali issued that directive after aid groups offered evidence the administration wasn’t complying with his earlier order to lift the payment freeze.

Trump’s team told the Supreme Court that it can’t comply with Ali’s follow-up order on such a short time frame. The legal fight is happening at the same time the administration has fired or put on leave thousands of staff members of USAID, the source of most of the disputed funds.

Ali, appointed to the Washington bench by Joe Biden, will hold a hearing on Thursday on whether to order a longer-term injunction. The aid groups also want the judge to block the White House from dismantling USAID to keep it from processing payments and reinstating grants and contracts.

At the Supreme Court, acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris said the administration had begun making individual payments and decided to retain 500 USAID awards, while canceling 5,800. The State Department is keeping 2,700 awards and terminating 4,100, she said.

“The ‘funding freeze’ is not continuing; it is over,” she said. “The Department of State and USAID have now largely completed their individualized review of all funding awards and decided to retain thousands of awards, rendering respondents’ original challenge to the blanket ‘freeze’ moot.”

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday morning.

The aid groups blasted the administration’s claims that making quick payments isn’t feasible, telling the high court the government was seeking to “leverage its procrastination.”

Ali’s order was a legitimate step “to ensure compliance with one aspect of a TRO that the government had openly flouted for nearly two weeks,” the groups argued, referring to a temporary restraining order.

Roberts had temporarily paused Ali’s order a week ago to give the full court time to consider Trump’s request to lift the order altogether.

The order comes as the administration radically reshapes U.S. foreign policy. Trump’s team has axed foreign assistance contracts and continues to dismantle USAID, which managed $43 billion and had 10,000 members staff in 2023 but has seen thousands of agency employees furloughed, fired or recalled from postings abroad since Trump took office.

The groups in their lawsuit say that by freezing funds appropriated by Congress, the administration is violating the Constitution’s separation of powers as well as the federal law that governs the procedures used by administrative agencies.

The case is Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, 24A831.

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With assistance from Zoe Tillman and Iain Marlow.