Where do the USAID legal battles stand?

When President Donald Trump moved to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development, most organizations were terrified. It wasn’t clear whether speaking out against the administration would mean losing what little funding there was left — and day after day, many remained silent while the aid industry crumbled. But by early February, a handful of those affected broke rank. And soon enough, what began as a handful of emergency filings spiraled into a web of legal tests against the administration’s foreign assistance agenda. Ten months later, judges in district courts, appeals courts, and at times, the Supreme Court, have been asked to weigh in on everything from foreign aid funding to the firing of agency heads to the legality of the Department of Government Efficiency, the office that helped dismantle USAID and other institutions earlier this year. Together, these cases trace the same story: a development apparatus thrown into crisis, and the growing coalition of partners, employees, and grantees fighting to stabilize it. Some have secured early wins, but most remain locked in procedural battles that may still take months to resolve. These cases are just a sliver of the hundreds lodged against the Trump administration since early this year. But for the world of foreign aid, their outcomes are charting the limits of the administration’s authority — and the sector’s capacity to push back. USAID partners versus the Trump administration One of the first major legal blows to the Trump administration’s foreign assistance policy didn’t come from Congress, or even from inside the federal bureaucracy. It came from USAID’s own partners. In February, a coalition of aid groups — from some of the largest for-profit development firms to small nonprofits — filed suit against the administration, merging their cases soon after. What followed was a months-long legal whiplash: a case that pinballed through district court, drew in dozens of judges, and twice reached the steps of the Supreme Court. After several orders from a district judge mandated that the Trump administration pay its USAID partners, the highest court’s latest decision allowed the government to let billions of dollars in foreign aid expire by a Sept. 30 deadline. For those suing the government, the decision was shattering. The co-president of Public Citizen Litigation Group, which represented one of the organizations in the case, said the Supreme Court ratified the "unconstitutional, humanitarian disaster of the Trump administration’s foreign assistance cancellation policy.” The Trump administration also filed a motion to dismiss the case, which is still pending. But even so, the Supreme Court’s decision wasn’t a final determination, and the case was once again handed down to the appeals court. They are now weighing whether a lower court judge had “erred” in an earlier preliminary injunction — which had required the Trump administration to spend congressionally appropriated foreign assistance funding. The government has also been slowly making payments to USAID partners for work completed before Feb. 13, 2025, and as of early December, still had 1,500 payments to process. The fight brought by employees Throughout the year, several groups of USAID employees, contractors, and staff have brought the Trump administration to court. That includes a case led by the American Foreign Service Association, which represents both State Department and USAID employees; another brought by the Personal Services Contractor Association, which represents 1,000 contractors formerly employed by USAID; and a third brought by anonymous USAID staff, which focused not just on the government, but billionaire Elon Musk and DOGE. Both cases brought by workers’ unions, the American Foreign Service and Personal Services Contractor associations, went back and forth for months, ultimately landing at the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in August. The judge ordered briefings — the formal written arguments laying out each side’s facts, legal questions, and claims — to be submitted by all parties in November, December, and January. After that, the court was expected to review the filings and decide whether to hear oral arguments or issue a ruling based solely on the written record. The case against Musk — who is no longer a part of the Trump administration, nor DOGE — has taken a different trajectory. Early on, the judge in that case ruled DOGE’s actions were “likely” unconstitutional; in August, he ruled that USAID employees could pursue a class action lawsuit against Musk himself. The employees suing Musk attempted to bring the billionaire to court to testify, along with former State Department foreign aid head Peter Marocco, and the next official who took that role, Jeremy Lewin. But in late November, the government shot back, filing a motion for a protective order for all three men. The motion claimed that the plaintiffs could not demonstrate the “exceptional circumstances” needed for those depositions to occur. The judge has not yet weighed in. The legal cases at smaller agencies It wasn’t just USAID that was hollowed out by the Trump administration earlier this year. The U.S. Institute of Peace, U.S. African Development Foundation, and Inter-American Foundation were all targeted in an executive order signed by the president this February — one that declared all three agencies "unnecessary," and demanded they be reduced to “statutory requirements.” Over the next several weeks, chaos ensued at each of those agencies, with the Trump administration gutting board members, firing staff, and canceling contracts at a rapid pace. While all those organizations brought the government to court, only one of the three has seen success so far: the Inter-American Foundation, an independent U.S. agency that provides grants to community-led organizations across Latin America and the Caribbean. In August, a judge ruled that the Trump administration had unlawfully fired IAF’s chief, Sara Aviel — and as a result, that firing was “without legal effect.” Aviel was reinstated at the organization, and Pete Marocco, who had earlier installed himself as the organization’s president, was prohibited from serving on the IAF board. The U.S. Institute of Peace and the U.S. African Development Foundation have been less lucky. For the USIP, a congressionally funded nonprofit organization, the legal back-and-forth has now been extended even further: earlier this year, a judge ordered the case be put on pause until the Supreme Court ruled on one brought by former Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. For USADF, the judge sided with the Trump administration in the first case — which was brought by the organization’s head, Ward Brehm — and gave relief to just one USADF grantee in the second, which was brought by the Lusaka-based Rural Development Innovations Limited. While the first case has been closed, the second remains pending, with all parties required to submit a status report and their next course of action by early December. There are also cases brought by the National Endowment for Democracy, which provides grant funding to organizations promoting democratic engagement, election monitoring, and other like initiatives; and one brought by a collection of labor rights organizations, which sued the Department of Labor. The endowment saw early and sustained wins throughout the year, with a judge ultimately blocking the Trump administration from withholding funding in August. Soon after, however, the government appealed the case to the D.C. Circuit Court, and many of the organizations the endowment had once funded have been crippled by cuts to USAID — a separate channel of funding that was not saved by the lawsuit. The case against the Department of Labor is still ongoing.