Foreign aid groups ask Supreme Court to leave in place judge's order that they get paid
It's unclear when the Supreme Court will decide whether to reinstate the judge's compliance order.
WASHINGTON – Organizations waiting to be paid by the federal government for foreign aid work asked the Supreme Court on Friday to deny the Trump administration’s request for a reprieve.
“The government comes to this Court with an emergency of its own making,” lawyers for contractors and grant recipients wrote in a filing.
The groups said they were plunged into financial turmoil when President Donald Trump, on his first day in office, ordered a blanket freeze on foreign-assistance funding.
Companies and nonprofit organizations that have long collaborated with the government to deliver assistance have had to lay off workers, faced potential insolvency along with other harms as they’ve halted operations and not been paid for work already completed, they told the court.
“Meanwhile, many of those who depend on (the assistance) face starvation, disease and death,” they wrote.
A federal judge ordered the administration to suspend the freeze and then set a deadline for compliance after the groups said they had still not been paid.
Hours before the judge’s Wednesday deadline, Chief Justice John Roberts paused the order and asked the aid groups to respond to the administration’s arguments that the order should be overturned.
In its emergency application, the Justice Department had told the court it intends to pay "legitimate claims," but the judge’s timeline was "not logistically or technically feasible."
The government also argues the judge is interfering in the powers the Constitution gives Trump.
“The President’s power is at its apex – and the power of the judiciary is at its nadir – in matters of foreign affairs,” Sarah Harris, the acting solicitor general, told the Supreme Court Wednesday.
In their response, the foreign aid organizations called it “extraordinary” that the administration would seek the Supreme Court’s review of a district court’s compliance order.
The administration is asking for permission to continue to defy the lower court after making no effort to meet a deadline it now says is impossible, they argued.
In the meantime, they said, Americans have lost their jobs, businesses have been ruined, food is rotting and critical medical care is being withheld.
“These are the fruits of the government’s actions,” they wrote.
It’s unclear when the Supreme Court will decide whether to reinstate the judge’s order.