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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL), in partnership with co-counsel Christopher Mills, filed an amicus brief supporting the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) ability to terminate nearly one billion dollars in federal grants to left-wing organizations. As AFL argues in its brief, these groups “effectively demand nearly $1 billion in unsecured loans from federal taxpayers for work that the government has determined is no longer in the public interest—even though this Court has already held that these organizations cannot recover anything in this action.”
In February 2025, DOJ began reviewing thousands of competitive, discretionary grants to determine whether each grant aligned with the Trump Administration’s priorities. In April, after reviewing more than 11,000 grants, DOJ decided to terminate 376 of them, per the government’s filings. In May, several leftist nonprofits, represented by the Democracy Forward Foundation, brought a lawsuit against the government seeking to force it to spend nearly $1 billion in grants the government had decided were no longer in the public interest.
Last week, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia decided that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case, that the plaintiffs had no claim, and dismissed the case. After that, the plaintiffs took the extraordinary step of seeking an injunction pending review, just three days after the court had already denied their motion for a preliminary injunction. The court ordered the Department of Justice to answer a narrow question.
AFL filed an amicus brief to state why the court should stand by its prior ruling and deny the motion for injunction pending appeal.
AFL’s brief argues:
The plaintiffs cannot meet the high bar they need to show because, consistent with the court’s prior holding, the court lacks authority to grant relief on the merits, and the plaintiffs have failed to state a claim. There is an irreconcilable mismatch between the alternative relief suggested by the court and the plaintiffs’ irreparable harm showing. Finally, if the court is inclined to grant an injunction, it should require the plaintiffs to post a bond to secure taxpayers’ interests.
“Just three days after the court found that there is no legal basis for the judiciary to intervene and force the government to loan nearly a billion dollars to organizations such as Chinese for Affirmative Action, these groups asked for one of the most exceptional forms of judicial relief: an injunction pending appellate review,” said Andrew Block, America First Legal Senior Counsel. “Now, in typical swamp fashion, entrenched left-wing interests, long enriched by public funds, are resisting change. However, the Trump Administration has halted funding for organizations that fail to serve the public good, and the court has upheld their lack of standing to challenge this. The American people have spoken, these groups have had their day in court, and they must accept that the era of unchecked public funding is over.”
Read the brief here.
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