(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Monday said President Donald Trump’s administration violated a court order lifting a broad freeze on federal spending and directed the government to immediately release any withheld funds.
U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, had already blocked the funding freeze with a temporary restraining order on Jan. 31, but a group of Democratic state attorneys general who sued to block the move said last week that the government was still withholding funds.
The ruling appeared to be the first instance of a judge finding the Trump administration had violated a court order pausing a new policy rollout. The Trump administration on Monday said it is appealing.
“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,” McConnell said on Monday. “These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the TRO.”
McConnell said all funding must be restored at least until he can hold a hearing on the states’ motion for a longer-term order.
On Feb. 6, a lawyer with the office of Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James told McConnell that state agencies were still having difficulty accessing federal funds, including billions of dollars for infrastructure projects under the Inflation Reduction Act.
The Trump administration had told states it believed the order did not apply to certain environmental and infrastructure spending, and that some payments were delayed for “operational and administrative reasons.”
However, McConnell said his order had been “clear and unambiguous” in applying to all funding frozen in response to sweeping executive orders by Trump.
The states originally sued the administration over a memorandum from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget announcing a wide-ranging freeze of federal spending. Soon after the lawsuit was filed, OMB rescinded that memo.
The memo was part of a larger Trump administration push to tighten federal spending and reshape the federal bureaucracy, which has sparked a flurry of lawsuits.
In a separate case over Trump’s push to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, federal employee unions have accused the administration of violating a court order reinstating USAID workers who were placed on administrative leave.
(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Mark Porter, Alexia Garamfalvi, Matthew Lewis and David Gregorio)
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