A divided Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration’s request to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid approved by Congress frozen.
However, the court did not immediately say when the money must be released, allowing the White House to continue to dispute the issue in lower courts.
The ruling was 5-4.
The order was unsigned, but four conservative justices dissented – Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh. That put five justices in the majority: Chief Justice John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The majority noted that given a court-ordered deadline to spend the money last week had already passed, the lower courts should “clarify what obligations the government must fulfil to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order.”
In a strongly worded dissent, Alito wrote that he was “stunned” by the court’s decision to permit the lower-court judge to order the administration to unfreeze the foreign aid at issue in the case.
Alito added: “A federal court has many tools to address a party’s supposed nonfeasance. Self-aggrandizement of its jurisdiction is not one of them.”
While the ruling was 5-4, it was “extremely modest,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
“The unsigned order does not require the Trump administration to immediately make up to $2 billion in foreign aid payments; it merely clears the way for the district court to compel those payments, presumably if it is more specific about the contracts that have to be honored,” Vladeck said. “The fact that four justices nevertheless dissented – vigorously – from such a decision is a sign that the Court is going to be divided, perhaps along these exact lines, in many of the more impactful Trump-related cases that are already on their way.”
The appeal raced to the high court within days – exceedingly fast by the federal judiciary’s standards. It is the second case to reach the justices dealing with Trump’s moves to consolidate power within the executive branch and dramatically reshape the government after taking power in January.
GNA/CNN.
