The Trump administration on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to step into an ongoing fight over billions of dollars in foreign aid that it says a lower court will force it to spend unless the justices intervene.
The emergency appeal, which asks the high court to weigh in by next week, deals with an unusual procedural situation that the Department of Justice claims has threatened “irreparable diplomatic costs.” Even though an appeals court sided with President Donald Trump earlier this month in the case, a lower court decision requiring the money to be spent remains in effect.
Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, the administration said in its filing Tuesday, that lower court decision “will effectively force the government to rapidly obligate some $12 billion in foreign-aid funds,” overriding the Trump administration’s foreign-policy judgments.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled earlier this month that only the legislative branch can sue an administration for making changes to congressionally approved spending – not the nonprofit groups that had sued over the drastic proposed cuts. That decision overruled a lower court that had blocked the administration from moving forward with the cuts.
But the case was appealed to the full DC Circuit, which is still considering it. In the meantime, lower courts have declined to halt the district court decision against Trump, which has effectively left it in place.
The district court, the Trump administration asserted in its filing Tuesday, “has installed itself as supervisor-in-chief of further spending and rescissions proposals.” The court’s order, the administration said, will require the government “to make available for obligation tens of billions of dollars in appropriated foreign aid funds and to spend many billions of dollars by September 30.”
The administration asked the Supreme Court to step in and block the district court’s ruling by September 2, to head off “extensive preliminary steps that themselves inflict irreparable harm on the United States.”
Grant recipients had sued over access to billions of dollars for global health and HIV/AIDS programs that were appropriated by Congress to be disbursed by the State Department and the now-essentially shuttered agency USAID.
The case has wound its way to the Supreme Court once before. In March, a narrow majority of the court initially rejected the administration’s request to keep the money frozen. But that exceedingly narrow decision allowed the litigation to continue to play out in lower courts.
CNN’s Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.
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