WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to withhold $4 billion in foreign aid that had been appropriated by Congress, in a preliminary test of President Donald Trump’s efforts to wrest the power of the purse from lawmakers.
In its brief order, the court’s conservative majority allowed the president to cut the funding in part because it said his flexibility to engage in foreign affairs outweighed “the potential harm” faced by aid recipients. The justices cautioned that their decision, a temporary one while litigation continues, “should not be read as a final determination on the merits.”
The three liberal justices dissented, saying the issue before the court was too consequential to have been dealt with on an emergency basis.
“The stakes are high: At issue is the allocation of power between the executive and Congress” over how government funds are spent, wrote Justice Elena Kagan, who was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Kagan noted that while the majority’s order was an interim measure, the funding Congress appropriated would not reach foreign aid groups regardless of how the underlying litigation was resolved.
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In response to the Supreme Court order, lawyers for one of the challengers, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, said the ruling allowed the administration to refuse to pay out billions it was required by law to spend.
“This result further erodes separation of powers principles that are fundamental to our constitutional order,” Nicolas Sansone, a lawyer with the Public Citizen Litigation Group who represents the coalition, said in a statement. “It will also have a grave humanitarian impact on vulnerable communities throughout the world.”
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Solicitor General D. John Sauer had told the justices that a lower court order requiring the president to release billions of dollars before the end of the month raised “a grave and urgent threat” to the president’s ability to negotiate with Congress over the money without interference from the courts.
Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office pausing funding for programs around the world to determine whether they were “fully aligned with the foreign policy of the president.”
Two nonprofit organizations — the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council — challenged the freeze as an unconstitutional infringement of Congress’ authority over spending.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.