ACLJ Victory: D.C. Circuit Backs President Trump's Authority Over Federal Funding

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals just handed down a major win for the separation of powers and the Executive branch's authority to manage federal spending – and the ACLJ was there, on the front lines, filing an amicus brief in support of the government's position.

Days into the current administration, OMB issued Memorandum M-25-13, directing federal agencies to temporarily pause certain grant, loan, and financial assistance programs while they reviewed those programs against the President's new executive orders. Almost immediately, the Left used the memo to sow confusion and panic among grant recipients who read it as an across-the-board freeze on virtually all federal funding.

OMB moved quickly to correct the record. The very next day, it issued guidance making clear – in writing, in bold print – that "[a]ny program not implicated by the President's Executive orders is not subject to the pause." The day after that, OMB rescinded the memo entirely.

None of that stopped the National Council of Nonprofits and its co-plaintiffs. They had already rushed to federal court, and the district court granted a sweeping preliminary injunction against a memorandum that, by the time the injunction was issued, no longer even existed.

We filed an amicus brief in both the district court and the D.C. Circuit in support of OMB and Director Russell Vought, and our argument centered on a simple, foundational principle: you cannot ask a federal court to enjoin a document that has already been withdrawn. Our brief laid out why the Plaintiffs' lawsuit had become moot the moment OMB rescinded the memorandum – the Prayer for Relief in their complaint was tied exclusively to that one memo, and once the memo was gone, there was nothing left for a court to strike down.

We also went further, explaining that the memo was never a final, reviewable agency action to begin with, since it left ultimate funding decisions to individual agencies applying their own legal judgment – the opposite of the "categorical, indefinite funding freeze" Plaintiffs claimed it to be.

Undergirding all of it was the constitutional principle the ACLJ has defended for decades: the Constitution vests responsibility for administering and disbursing public funds in the Executive branch, and courts should be extremely cautious before using an Article III injunction to police internal executive deliberations over a policy that no longer exists.

In its decision, the D.C. Circuit vacated the preliminary injunction – squarely on mootness grounds the ACLJ urged. The court held that the government had made the showing required under the voluntary cessation doctrine: because OMB's clarifying guidance was issued before the government even knew a lawsuit had been filed, there was no reason to believe the agency rescinded the memo merely to dodge litigation and quietly revive a global freeze later. A rescinded memorandum cannot be enjoined. A case challenging only that rescinded memorandum cannot survive. The injunction had to go.

This case was never really about a two-day-old memo. It was about whether federal courts can be enlisted to freeze the Executive branch's hand on the public purse based on a document the government itself had already withdrawn – and whether litigants can sidestep mootness simply by pointing to press statements and lingering confusion rather than to the actual legal instrument they sued over.

The D.C. Circuit's ruling reaffirms bedrock separation-of-powers principles: the President and his agencies bear responsibility for administering federal funds, and Article III courts do not sit as roving overseers of executive policy that has already been abandoned. That is precisely the argument the ACLJ brought to the D.C. Circuit, and it is precisely the outcome the court reached.

The ACLJ will continue to stand in defense of the separation of powers and the Executive branch's constitutional authority – in this case, and in every case where that authority comes under attack.

Take action with the ACLJ. Sign our petition: Defeat Rogue Judges – Defend the Constitution.