Judge Bars Admin From Making Fund Cuts 07/20 06:19

   A federal judge in Boston on Friday ruled the Trump administration can't use 
an obscure clause relating to agency priorities to make billions of dollars in 
funding cuts.

   BOSTON (AP) -- A federal judge in Boston on Friday ruled the Trump 
administration can't use an obscure clause relating to agency priorities to 
make billions of dollars in funding cuts.

   Twenty-three states had a filed a lawsuit last year accusing the 
administration of using the clause to make cuts to everything from crime 
prevention to food security to scientific research. They were concerned that it 
would be used to cancel current and future grants.

   U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani granted a summary judgment preventing the 
administration from relying on the clause to make cuts and denied a motion by 
the government to dismiss the case.

   "Defendants' interpretation of the Termination Clause is not clearly 
supported by the text of the provision, runs counter to the regulatory scheme, 
receives no support in the rulemaking history, and would violate the Spending 
Clause's requirement that conditions be imposed unambiguously," Talwani, who 
was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, wrote.

   The lawsuit argued that the Office of Management and Budget promulgated the 
use of the clause in question to justify what it described as a "nationwide 
slash-and-burn campaign."

   The clause, which was first introduced in 2020 and revised in 2024, says 
federal agents can terminate a grant if the award "no longer effectuates the 
program goals or agency priorities." The states argued that the language, put 
in place during the Biden administration, was for the first time being used to 
terminate grants.

   "Instead of working with us to keep the public safe and lower costs for 
hardworking New Jerseyans, the Trump Administration has recklessly and 
illegally gutted federal funding for public safety, disaster preparedness, 
scientific research, clean water, and more," New Jersey Attorney General 
Jennifer Davenport said in a statement.

   "Today's decision is an important win for all New Jerseyans and confirms 
that the Trump Administration defied the law when it embarked on its campaign 
to gut critical federal funding to the states," she continued. "The President 
and his allies cannot hold critical programs hostage to their personal whims 
and political ideologies, destabilizing the country by yanking essential 
federal funding that was already awarded to the states."

   Calling the case an "extraordinarily unusual lawsuit," lawyers for federal 
government argued it should be dismissed because some of those grants have 
already been terminated and plaintiffs' argument about the impact to future 
grants was far too speculative. They also accused the states of "raising 
blanket, undifferentiated objections" to the termination of thousands of grants 
without seeking relief that would "restore a single grant."

   "That mismatch between the allegedly unlawful agency 'decision' on one hand, 
and the amorphous relief requested in this suit, on the other, creates a set of 
jurisdiction and justiciability defects that doom this lawsuit at the 
threshold," lawyers wrote in the motion to dismiss.

   A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget did not respond to a 
request for comment.