Public Citizen Litigation Group and Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit on behalf of the American Foreign Service Association and American Federation of Government Employees against Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department, and the Department of Treasury for shutting down USAID, causing a global humanitarian crisis.
The complaint explains that by imposing stop work orders, freezing funding, putting staff on leave or terminating them entirely, naming Secretary Rubio as Acting Director, and other actions, the Trump Administration has cost thousands of Americans their jobs and threatened U.S. national security interests. And it has led to humanitarian catastrophe: USAID provides life-saving food, medicine, and support to hundreds of thousands of people across the world.
Closing USAID without congressional authorization is unconstitutional: the President does not have the authority to dismantle an agency created by Congress. In addition to violating the separation of powers, shuttering USAID violates the Appropriations Act, which explicitly restricts the ability of the Executive Branch to reorganize USAID and requires any attempt to terminate funding to receive approval from Congress.
Without U.S. foreign assistance, millions of people could be left without clean water, sanitation services, medicine, education, shelter, protection, or other essential emergency relief in disaster and conflict areas around the world.
On February 7th, the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia granted the plaintiff’s request to pause USAID’s shutdown, halting the Trump administration’s attempt to place 2,200 aid workers on leave and pausing the shutdown policy.
On February 13th, Oxfam America joined the lawsuit. On the same day, the court extended its temporary restraining order on the Trump-Vance administration’s attempt to shutter USAID’s operations.
However, on February 21st, the court denied the plaintiff’s request to keep the pause while the case develops.On March 10, we filed a motion for summary judgment, and on March 11, ProPublica reports revealed internal directives ordering the shredding and burning of classified and personnel records, a clear violation of federal law that threatens not only transparency but also the future ability to reconstitute the agency. To stop this unlawful actions, we filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) asking the court to order USAID to immediately stop these actions.