On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court passed on a very short order, effectively demanding that the government pay as much as $2 billion in foreign aid contractors for work already completed. The court's orders are very narrow and unlikely to have many impacts on future cases.
Shortly after President Donald Trump took office twice, his administration tried to suspend funding for the United States Organization for International Development (USAID). Wednesday's Supreme Court order is the latest chapter in an ongoing lawsuit over whether it is legal to cut the funds. In that order, the Supreme Court leaves a lower court decision that was permitted as of January 19th, prohibiting “suspension, suspension or otherwise obstructing the obligation or payment of the Foreign Support Fund for the time being.”
So this is a defeat for Trump, but it's a very small thing. The Supreme Court order is only a long paragraph, and says the courts do not second guess the lower court because of amateur mistakes in playing lawyer General Sarah Harris and other Justice Department lawyers working on the case.
The Supreme Court has also decided on the case. State Department vs AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition5-4 votes – Justice Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Judge Brett Kavanaugh joined the dissenting opinion by Justice Samuel Alito. That means that despite Harris' mistakes, there are still four justices on Trump's side.
Trump's legal team fled the case by suing the wrong lower court order
On February 13, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali issued a temporary order suggesting that the Trump administration's suspension of USAID funds was illegally arbitrary. Because the administration “provided no reason why the complete suspension of foreign aid assigned to all Congress was a reasonable precursor to review the program,” hence reviewing the program for efficiency or non-expansion with Trump's policy goals.”
Twelve days later, after complaining that the plaintiff in the case had not yet received the payments being paid by the government, Ali issued a secondary order seeking his first execution. That February 25th order saw the State Department and USAID “have to pay all bills and credit drawdown requests for work to be completed prior to court admission. [first order] February 13th. ”
As Alito argues, there is a plausible argument that Judge Ali made a mistake when he issued the order on February 13th. For example, the plaintiff could have filed a lawsuit in the wrong court. Alito suggests that the case should be filed in the federal claims court rather than in Ali's US District Court for the District of Columbia.
However, the Trump administration inexplicably did not surrender Ali's February 13th order. Instead, they only challenged the February 25th order to force that first order. That means there is Alito's concern that other lower courts would have heard that the case was not properly filed by the Trump administration.
As most justice explained in Wednesday's order, “On February 13, the District of Columbia U.S. District Court issued a temporary restraining order that barred the government from enforcing an order suspending payments of foreign development aid funds. The current application does not challenge the government's obligation to comply with that order.”
That said, there appears to be concerns that the majority order requires the ALI to require the government to make an amendment too quickly, “to give full consideration to the feasibility of the compliance timeline and make it clear what obligations the government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order.”
Wednesday's order dodges the biggest issue presented by the incident.
In any case, all the issues raised by both the majority and the objection AIDS vaccine Order – Whether the government appealed the correct order, whether the plaintiff sued in the right court, and whether Ali should proceed more carefully is quite far from the big constitutional questions presented by this case.
The Trump administration claims it has the power to “built” federal funds. This means that the president can cancel spending allocated by the law of parliament. However, the president does not have this authority under the Constitution. Future Supreme Court Justice William Lanequist wrote in a 1969 Department of Justice memo:
Rehnquist's views were reflected in Kavanuagh in his 2013 opinion, which he wrote as a judge of the lower court.
Therefore, if the Supreme Court ultimately determines that the Constitution still applies to Donald Trump, he is permitted to use the president's powers to commit a crime if he finds it an uncertain outlook after the court's decision last July.
But for now, the court looks like content that leaves that showdown on another day. Supreme Court order AIDS vaccine The case does not mention any of these major issues and will mostly turn on mistakes made by Department of Justice attorneys that can be corrected in future cases.
