On Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued a swift ruling requiring the government to pay foreign aid contractors as much as $2 billion for work they’ve already completed. This decision stems from an ongoing legal battle over whether the Trump administration’s attempt to cut off funding to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was legal.
The Court’s ruling leaves in place a lower court decision that blocked Trump from halting payments for foreign assistance that had already been approved. The Court’s order is just one paragraph long, mainly pointing to a mistake made by Sarah Harris, the acting solicitor general, and other Justice Department lawyers involved in the case.
The mistake occurred when Trump’s lawyers appealed the wrong court order. On February 13, federal District Judge Amir Ali issued a temporary order ruling that Trump’s suspension of USAID funding was illegal because it lacked any explanation or justification for the cuts. Then, on February 25, Ali issued a second order, demanding the State Department and USAID pay all outstanding invoices and requests for funds related to contracts that had already been completed.
The case, Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, was decided by a 5-4 vote, with Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh joining a dissenting opinion by Justice Samuel Alito. Despite the error made by Trump’s legal team, four justices still sided with him, highlighting the mixed outcome in the case.
In his dissent, Alito suggested that Ali had made a mistake in issuing the February 13 order and that the case should have been filed in a different court. However, Trump’s legal team did not appeal that order. Instead, they only challenged the February 25 order, leading to the current Supreme Court ruling.
The Court’s order on Wednesday emphasized that the government was not contesting the February 13 order, but it did request that Judge Ali clarify the timeline for the government to comply with the decision. This suggests that some justices are concerned about the pace at which the government will need to act to meet the requirements of the order.
While the ruling addresses some important legal details, it does not address the larger constitutional questions raised by the case. The Trump administration has argued that the president has the power to withhold federal spending without Congress’s approval, a power the Constitution does not grant. Former Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist and Judge Kavanaugh have both argued that the president cannot refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated.
For now, the Supreme Court has sidestepped these constitutional issues, leaving the door open for further challenges. The Court’s ruling this week largely focuses on the mistakes made by Trump’s legal team, and the bigger questions about the president’s power to cancel federal spending remain unresolved for the time being.
