Supreme Court says judge can force Trump administration to pay foreign aid

by Justin Jouvenal, Annie Gowen, Ann E. Marimow

(c) 2025 , The Washington Post


A sharply 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 for work already done.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal justices in the 5-4 order, which was the high court’s first significant move on lawsuits related to President Donald Trump’s initiatives in his second term.

As is customary in emergency orders, the majority did not explain the reasoning for its decision. It directed the lower court to clarify what obligations the government must fulfill to global health groups, with consideration of the “feasibility of any compliance timelines.”

Soon after the ruling, U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali ordered the government to develop a schedule for restarting the payments.

Aid groups had argued that the Trump administration was flouting Ali’s order to pay its bills and hailed the high court’s decision as a sign that the president cannot ignore the law.

The majority’s decision drew a vigorous dissent from four conservative justices who questioned whether the lower court has 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., joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Alito said the majority should have put the enforcement order on hold until the government could petition the Supreme Court to consider the case more fully, signaling what could be the opening chapter in a longer fight over whether the administration can freeze such payments.

The high court’s conservative majority, including Alito, has taken steps in recent years to expand presidential power, most notably in its 2024 ruling to shield Trump from criminal prosecution for his official actions. Last month, when the court refused to immediately allow Trump to fire the head of an independent government watchdog agency, Alito and Gorsuch dissented, saying the court should have intervened to consider the issue.

The administration is facing more than 100 lawsuits challenging its other actions in lower courts, and a number of those are also expected to eventually reach the high court. The order in the USAID case was issued the morning after Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress, in which he touted a number of his efforts to reshape the bureaucracy.

Jenny Breen, an associate professor of law at Syracuse University, said it was difficult to draw sweeping generalizations from a single case, but “if we are going to take away anything, it might be that the Supreme Court is going to pay attention when the government does not comply with court orders.”

But Breen said the fact that four justices signed onto the dissent indicates “a tolerance for a very expansive notion of executive power” in a significant segment of the court: “The 5-4 split here makes clear there is definitely turbulence ahead here, and there is going to be division.”

The lawsuit seeking to restart the funding was brought by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council. The groups said the Trump administration’s 90-day freeze on foreign aid had pushed organizations to the brink of insolvency, forced layoffs, and delayed the delivery of lifesaving HIV drugs and food assistance to unstable regions worldwide.

Ali had ordered the money to begin flowing last week, after the Trump administration appeared to defy an earlier ruling that the freeze was imposed too hastily and should be lifted for the time being.

But the government appealed the Feb. 26 deadline set by Ali, saying it would take weeks longer for USAID and the State Department to resume payments for work completed before Feb. 13.

The global health groups said in court filings that the government created an “emergency of its own making” by falling to comply with the restraining order immediately after it was issued.

In ruling against the government, the Supreme Court turned aside arguments by acting solicitor general Sarah M. Harris, who called Ali’s deadline an “impossible order” because 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.

That position drew sympathy from the dissenters. In a blistering assessment, Alito said Ali had issued an overly broad ruling, “brushed aside” the government’s position that the judge had issued a “lawless order,” and hamstrung officials by giving them so little time to object to his decision.

The government “must apparently pay the $2 billion posthaste – not because the law requires it, but simply because a District Judge so ordered,” Alito wrote. “As the Nation’s highest court, we have a duty to ensure that the power entrusted to federal judges by the Constitution is not abused. Today, the Court fails to carry out that responsibility.”

In a statement after the ruling, the groups said it “confirms that the Administration cannot ignore the law. To stop needless suffering and death, the government must now comply with the order issued three weeks ago to lift its unlawful termination of federal assistance.”

The International Rescue Committee, a global relief agency, said in a statement that “access to this funding is critical to enable organizations like the IRC to continue crucial lifesaving work.”

The abrupt halting of aid touched off turmoil within USAID as well. A senior official with the agency 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 his memos “further confirm that Defendants have taken no steps toward compliance with this Court’s February 13 [temporary restraining order] and, to the contrary, have actively taken steps to prevent compliance.”

The memos estimate that the pause in foreign aid could lead to as many as 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 wider 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 will 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.

Ali will hold a hearing on the issue Thursday and discuss with the parties the timeline for restarting payment.