Judge Rebukes Trump Administration: Hidden Spending Plans Must Be Public, Transparency Advocates Celebrate Victory

In a decisive ruling on Wednesday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to cease concealing information regarding agency expenditures. This directive came as a direct critique of the actions of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

This legal battle originated when Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the Protect Democracy Project filed a lawsuit demanding access to the “Public Apportionment Database.” This database had been removed from public access in March 2025 at the instruction of OMB Director Russ Vought.

In a significant decision in July 2025, Senior U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, appointed by Bill Clinton, commanded the Trump administration to “stop violating the law” and reinstate public access. Judge Sullivan determined that the database’s removal contravened the appropriations acts of the two preceding years, as well as certain sections of the Paperwork Reduction Act.

By August 2025, the administration complied and restored the database online. However, the plaintiffs soon identified a new issue: dozens of documents within the database alluded to an “undisclosed spend plan.” This prompted them to file an eight-page motion to enforce in September, highlighting their concerns.

The central argument of the plaintiffs’ motion is that these plans, referenced in legally binding footnotes, qualify as documents that “apportion” an appropriation according to relevant laws. Thus, they argue, this non-public information is pertinent to the funding in question and should be made available in the database for public scrutiny.

“Stated differently, by incorporating by reference the terms in spend plans in legally binding footnotes apportioning appropriations, OMB has made the terms of the spend plans part of the apportionments,” the motion to enforce reads. “Thus, to comply with the statutory transparency requirements, OMB must disclose the spend plans in the Public Apportionments Database.”

In a 14-page memorandum opinion and order, Sullivan cites from Black’s Law Dictionary to provide the U.S. Department of Justice with something not entirely unlike remedial legal education.

From the order, at length:

When a “secondary document” is incorporated by reference, it becomes “part of [the] primary document.” Moreover, “[w]here a writing refers to another document, that other document . . . becomes constructively a part of the writing, and in that respect the two form a single instrument.” Put otherwise, “[t]he incorporated matter is to be interpreted as part of the writing.”

The court goes on to note that the Trump administration defendants “fail to respond to Plaintiffs’ incorporation-by-reference argument.”

And that argument, Sullivan says, is enough here.

“The Court agrees with Plaintiffs that when OMB conditions the ability of an agency to obligate funds upon OMB’s agreement with the contents of a spend plan in a legally-binding footnote, OMB has incorporated-by-reference the terms of the spend plan into the apportionment and therefore the spend plan is a ‘document apportioning an appropriation’ that must be disclosed under the 2022 and 2023 Acts,” the order reads.

The government, for its part, argued that Joe Biden’s administration similarly did not provide access to such spend plans. But, the court noted, the plaintiffs countered that the Biden administration’s database documents “rarely” even contained such references.

The court rejected the argument about the Biden precedent out of hand. In turn, the court also rejected a related defense claim that the plaintiffs waived their argument because the Biden administration established the practice of referencing undisclosed spend plans.

“[B]ecause Defendants illegally removed the database, Plaintiffs could not have known that OMB is now with significantly greater frequency incorporating spend plans by reference into apportionment documents,” Sullivan explains. “Plaintiffs have not waived this argument because until the illegally removed database was restored, Plaintiffs could not have known that documents ‘required to be disclosed by the 2022 and 2023 Acts’ were missing.”

The court then tidily summarized the issue and order:

OMB has incorporated-by-reference the terms of certain spend plans in legally binding footnotes. Since the terms of such spend plans contain legally binding limits on the agencies’ ability to obligate funds, the spend plans are “documents apportioning an appropriation,” and must be made publicly available under the 2022 and 2023 Acts and this Court’s July 21, 2025, Order. Because the spend plans have not been made publicly available, Plaintiffs have not “received all relief required by the Court’s earlier order.”