Foreign aid grants termination permitted by appellate court under Trump's administration
The U.S. D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that only the Comptroller General, an independent official within the legislative branch, has the authority to sue the executive branch over alleged impoundments of congressionally appropriated funds. This decision restricts the ability of other parties, including humanitarian groups or aid recipients, to challenge such executive actions directly.
In a 2-1 ruling, the court emphasised several limitations and implications of this role. The Impoundment Control Act (ICA) explicitly empowers only the Comptroller General to bring suit to require that impounded funds be made available. Other parties lack a statutory or constitutional cause of action for impoundment disputes.
Impoundment disputes are fundamentally statutory, so they cannot be reframed successfully as ultra vires or direct constitutional claims by third parties. This limits the judiciary’s role and restricts immediate challenges to impoundment by other interested parties, potentially delaying relief and complicating efforts to enforce congressional appropriations.
The Comptroller General’s role is a narrow statutory remedy rather than a broad check on executive discretion. The court has reiterated that the President does not have constitutional power to selectively impound funds against congressional appropriations, citing previous judicial opinions that reject any broad executive authority to decline spending appropriated funds.
However, the Comptroller General’s role is not without practical limitations. This official may face political and procedural challenges in intervening timely, suggesting that reliance solely on this official to enforce appropriations limits Congress’s practical ability to ensure compliance by the executive.
The court's decision makes it harder for outside entities without contracts with the federal government to challenge the president's decisions, even with Congress' power of the purse. The federal government has already paid "substantially all of the amounts owed on existing contracts for work" earlier this year.
Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee, wrote a dissent, stating that the court's decision degrades the balance of powers and the ability to check the President when he violates the law. Lauren Bateman of Public Citizen Litigation Group, representing some of the grantees that sued, has announced plans to "seek further review from the court."
Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and a Georgetown law professor, criticized the court's reasoning as "nonsensical," because it cuts out the ability of parties to bring constitutional challenges to the president on budget changes. Judge Pan's dissent suggests that the real problem is the court is taking a textbook violation of the Constitution and minimizing it.
In conclusion, the Comptroller General’s role as the sole designated party authorized to sue over impoundment is a key limitation on judicial and congressional enforcement of spending laws. This framework limits direct judicial recourse by other stakeholders and confines the resolution of impoundment disputes primarily to a statutory mechanism that carries political and procedural constraints.
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