The United States Supreme Court has affirmed its ruling allowing the Trump Administration to temporarily halt $4 billion worth of foreign aid spending in what is known as a “pocket rescission” while legal challenges proceed in the lower courts.
This move by the President represented a rare use of the rescission process, which typically allows the president to request that Congress cancel previously approved federal funding and to withhold the money for 45 days while lawmakers decide whether or not to act.
Because there were less than 45 days until the end of the fiscal year at the time, the President’s plan to claw back billions in federal funding will effectively be implemented regardless of whether or not Congress approves of it.
According to the New York Post, a similar move had not been made by a president in nearly 50 years.
This new ruling from the Supreme Court does not represent a final judgement on the merits of the case, but rather it serves as an interim decision allowing the Administration to continue holding onto the identified funding while the case winds its way through the legal process.
Although the brief, nine-page order does not elaborate much upon the Justices’ reasoning, it does include a more explanatory dissent written by Justice Elena Kagan that was also signed by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The only insight offered by the majority of Justices on their ruling indicates a belief that the federal government’s “asserted harms to the Executive’s conduct of foreign affairs appear to outweigh the potential harm faced by respondents.”
The dissenting opinion expressed a much different interpretation of the case.
“This emergency application raises novel issues fundamental to the relationship between the President and Congress,” Justice Kagan wrote in her dissent. “It arises from the refusal of the President and his officers to obligate and spend billions of dollars that Congress appropriated for foreign aid.”
“This case arose because the President and his officers do not want to spend all the foreign-aid funds Congress deemed proper,” she said.
“Deciding the question presented thus requires the Court to work in uncharted territory,” Kagan wrote. “And, to repeat, the stakes are high: At issue is the allocation of power between the Executive and Congress over the expenditure of public monies.”
“The standard for granting emergency relief is supposed to be stringent,” said Kagan. “The Executive has not come close to meeting it here. And the consequence of today’s grant is significant.”
Kagan closed her remarks by asserting that she, and the other Justices who signed onto her dissent, had decided to break from the majority because the result of their ruling “conflicts with the separation of powers.”
Click Here to Read the Court’s Full Order
Even though the funding at issue in this case will soon lapse, this case is expected to continue playing out in the lower courts over the course of the coming weeks and months.
