By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) – Organizations and companies that contract with USAID, including the American Bar Association and international development firm Chemonics, on Tuesday sued President Donald Trump’s administration over what they called its unlawful moves to dismantle the U.S. foreign aid agency.
In the lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, the plaintiffs said Trump lacks the legal authority to shut down a federal agency established by Congress or to refuse to spend money that U.S. lawmakers allocated to it.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal challenges to the administration’s actions toward the U.S. Agency for International Development. It names Trump, the State Department and the Office of Management and Budget, which has issued a series of memoranda halting federal spending, as defendants and seeks a court order reversing the cuts to the agency’s funding and operations.
“Neither the president nor his subordinates have authority to thwart duly enacted statutes and substitute their own funding preferences for those Congress has expressed through legislation,” the lawsuit said.
“Defendants have dismantled the federal foreign-assistance system, reducing USAID to a husk of its former self: stripped of funding, devoid of employees, unable to perform basic tasks, and ultimately swallowed by the State Department,” it added.
The lawsuit said that funding has been cut off for existing contracts, including hundreds of millions of dollars for work that is already done.
Without funding, contractors – which perform much of USAID’s work around the world – “must lay off staff, cut ties with local actors, and essentially terminate their operations,” the lawsuit said. “There is a serious risk that they simply will not exist if defendants ever decide to un-pause their work.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The administration has argued in court that the president has “vast and generally unreviewable” power over foreign affairs and that the administration can put agency staff on leave for any reason.
It is the third lawsuit filed in Washington against the administration over its moves against USAID, following similar ones by a government employee union and association and by non-profit groups advocating AIDS research and global journalism development.
Hours after he was inaugurated on January 20, the Republican president ordered all U.S. foreign aid to be paused to ensure it is aligned with his “America First” policy.
The U.S. State Department issued worldwide stop-work directives after the executive order was issued, halting lifesaving aid programs around the world with limited exceptions for emergency food delivery. Most of USAID’s staff was put on leave last week, and employees stationed abroad have been recalled.
Numerous aid efforts have been halted as a result of the administration’s actions, according to the contractors’ lawsuit, including the contracted delivery of $240 million worth of medicines and health supplies by Chemonics. Failing to deliver them could lead to up to 566,000 deaths, including 215,000 children, the lawsuit said.
Staff at development firm DAI Global, one of the plaintiffs, are facing legal action in the countries where they work and could be “stranded” along with their families if the funding freeze continues, the lawsuit said.
The judge overseeing the case brought by the union last week blocked some of the administration’s actions, ruling that about 2,700 USAID employees who had been put on leave can return to work, though he did not order the agency’s funding restored.
(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Will Dunham)
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