Trump Hit With New Suit Asserting ‘Unlawful’ Shuttering of USAID

A coalition of the world’s largest voluntary lawyers’ associations, global health, and international business groups sued the Trump administration Tuesday over the shuttering of USAID, which it called “an unlawful and unconstitutional exercise of executive power.”

The US District Court for the District of Columbia must stop gutting the US Agency for International Development, a move that has irreparably harmed the plaintiffs, grantees, and contractors who’ve been forced to shut down programs and let employees go amid the freeze on foreign assistance, the complaint said.

The suit is the latest filed against President Donald Trump and federal officials in response to a Jan. 20 executive order in which Trump called US foreign assistance programs “antithetical to American values.” The order paused all foreign assistance funding, even that already appropriated by Congress.

The results have been dire, according to the plaintiffs, which include the American Bar Association, the Global Health Council, Management Sciences for Health, and the Small Business Association for International Companies.

“With extremely limited exceptions, USAID and the State Department have halted the flow of funding even to existing partners, even for work performed before President Trump took office, plunging those organizations (and the people who depend on them) into turmoil and costing thousands of Americans their jobs,” they said.

The administration’s actions “violate basic precepts of administrative law, numerous federal statutes, and bedrock separation-of-powers principles,” the plaintiffs said.

“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,” they said.

The administration’s actions violate the Administrative Procedure Act, are contrary to statutory and constitutional law, violate the separation of powers doctrine, and must be held unlawful and set aside, the plaintiffs said.

The complaint added that the administration’s acts are ultra vires, meaning no statute, constitutional provision, or other source of law authorizes the executive branch to withhold foreign assistance funds appropriated by Congress.

In addition to Trump, the defendants include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought, and Acting Deputy Administrator for Management and Resources of the US Agency for International Development Peter Marocco.

A federal judge in the same court last week blocked the administration’s plan to put USAID workers on leave.

Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP represents the plaintiffs.

The case is Global Health Council v. Trump, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-00402, complaint filed 2/11/25.