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U.S. President Donald Trump stands with newly sworn in U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett during a ceremonial swearing-in event on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 26, 2020 (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images).
An appellate court in Massachusetts on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s emergency bid to lift a lower court’s order that blocked the president’s massive funding freeze and directed the government to “immediately” restore large swathes of federal funding across multiple agencies.
In a brief two-page order, a three-judge panel on the First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously denied the administration’s request for an administrative stay of the district court’s temporary restraining order, becoming the second court in the last two weeks to hand the president a legal loss in the funding freeze battle by citing one of Donald Trump’s own Supreme Court nominees: Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
U.S. District Judge John McConnell, of Rhode Island, on Jan. 31 issued a temporary restraining order blocking the administration from implementing a policy that would freeze funding on distributions to federal grant programs. McConnell extended the restraining order on Feb. 6, then granted the plaintiffs’ motion for enforcement on Feb. 10 after finding that the administration had violated his restraining order.
The Feb. 10 order directed the administration to “immediately restore frozen funding” and “end any federal funding pause” during the pendency of the temporary restraining order. McConnell reasoned that the funding freeze was both unconstitutional and in violation of a federal law that blocks government action deemed “arbitrary and capricious.”
“The States have presented evidence in this motion that the Defendants in some cases have continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds,” McConnell wrote in the five-page order. “The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country. These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the TRO.”
The administration immediately fired back, asking the First Circuit to halt McConnell’s “extraordinary and unprecedented assertion of power” by issuing an administrative stay on his temporary restraining order — despite the fact that temporary restraining orders typically cannot be stayed.
But the judges on the First Circuit cited to March 2024 concurrence penned by Barrett in which she discusses the lack of jurisprudence surrounding administrative stays, which she calls a “measure that functions as a flexible, short-term tool” that acts as a “prelude to the main event: a ruling on the motion for a stay pending appeal.”
Noting that the First Circuit had “not addressed whether or when an administrative stay of the sort being requested here may be issued,” the appellate panel cited to Barrett’s opinion, writing “there is well-recognized uncertainty as to what standards guide the decision to issue one or not.”
The panel — made up of U.S. Circuit Judges David Barron, Julie Rikelman and Lara Montecalvo — ultimately concluded that the administration failed to justify that intervention by the appeals court was warranted.
“[I]nsofar as we have jurisdiction to consider this request for an administrative stay arising out of a temporary restraining order, the defendants do not cite any authority in support of their administrative stay request or identify any harm related to a specific funding action or actions that they will face without their requested administrative stay,” the panel wrote (citations removed).
The appeals court did not entirely rule out the possibility that it could step in, denying the motion without prejudice, but indicated that the administration should be patient with the district court.
“We are confident the District Court will act with dispatch to provide any clarification needed with respect to, among other things, the defendants’ contention that the February 10 Order ‘bars both the President and much of the Federal Government from exercising their own lawful authorities to withhold funding without the prior approval of the district court,”” the order continued.
The appeals court will also address the administration’s request for a “stay pending appeal” later this week, telling both parties they can submit court filings on that issue by 5 p.m. on Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan last month issued an administrative stay on Trump’s funding freeze by citing to the same opinion from Barrett.