A divided US Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to let President Donald Trump’s administration withhold payment to foreign aid organisations for work they already performed for the government as the Republican president moves to pull the plug on American humanitarian projects around the world.
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Handing a setback to Trump, the court in a 5-4 decision upheld Washington-based US District Judge Amir Ali’s order that had called on the administration to promptly release funding to contractors and recipients of grants from the US Agency for International Development and the State Department for their past work.
Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the decision.
The order by Ali, who is presiding over an ongoing legal challenge to Trump’s policy, had originally given the administration until February 26 to disburse the funding, which it has said totalled nearly US$2 billion that could take weeks to pay in full.
Chief Justice John Roberts paused that order hours before the midnight deadline to give the Supreme Court additional time to consider the administration’s more formal request to block Ali’s ruling. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices Trump appointed during his first presidential term.
Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris said in a Supreme Court filing on March 3 that blocking Ali’s order “is warranted to prevent reinstatement of a new, short-fused deadline that would unlawfully commandeer federal payment processes anew”.