Workers and partners make renewed push to block Trump’s dismantling of USAID

A union representing U.S. Agency for International Development employees and a foreign aid nonprofit have begun a renewed effort to block the Trump administration from following through on its plan to shut down the foreign aid agency, hopeful of avoiding the pitfall that hamstrung their initial legal challenge.

Last month, a federal judge declined to issue an injunction to prevent President Trump and Secretary of State and acting USAID Administrator Marco Rubio from placing thousands of the agency’s employees, both domestically stationed and working abroad, on administrative leave as political appointees cancelled contracts—at issue in multiple other lawsuits against USAID leadership—and grants en masse and prepares to terminate most of the workforce.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, found he lacked jurisdiction to weigh in on the matter, since litigation relating to federal employment actions and labor issues must first go before the Merit Systems Protection Board or the Federal Labor Relations Authority, respectively.

But in the intervening weeks, foreign aid nonprofit Oxfam America signed onto the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association’s lawsuit, broadening the harms claimed in the suit, whose central argument is that the effort to decimate the agency violates the constitutional separation of powers and violates both the statute establishing USAID and appropriations law requiring congressional approval before initiating any reorganization or downsizing.

Though several lawsuits brought by federal sector unions against the early actions of the Trump administration failed on similar jurisdictional grounds as the effort to keep USAID workers on duty, AFGE won a temporary restraining order requiring the Office of Personnel Management to rescind its directives orchestrating the recent governmentwide purge of recently hired, transferred or promoted employees, in part thanks to half a dozen nonprofits, whose claims could not be reviewed by those administrative bodies, signing onto the case.

In a motion for summary judgment in their favor filed Monday, the unions and nonprofits directly attack the notion that they should go before MSPB or the FLRA before federal court, arguing that they are not directly challenging any employment actions, but rather are citing those actions as evidence supporting their claim that the agency is being illegally shuttered.

“Naturally a campaign to shut down an agency comprised of thousands of federal employees will entail massive job losses, and plaintiffs have pointed to those job losses as evidence to support their claim that an unlawful dismantling of the agency is underway,” attorneys wrote. “But plaintiffs are not challenging the forthcoming [reductions in force] as inconsistent with the Merit System Principles or Office of Personnel Management regulations . . . Unlike [other recent cases], this case describes facts related to employment to illustrate the systematic shutdown of the agency—along with taking down webpages, transferring leases, reorganizing lines of authority, and canceling the vast majority of USAID awards and contracts.”

On Tuesday night, the organizations requested a new temporary restraining order in the case, following reports that USAID workers were being tasked with destroying documents “with potential pertinence” to the case. Briefs on that matter are due Thursday.