district court – State Attorneys General Blog

On March 6, 2025, Judge John J. McConnell of the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island granted the Motion for Preliminary Injunction sought by 22 state attorneys general and the Attorney General for the District of Columbia challenging the Trump Administration’s “pause” or “freeze” of grant funding payments. The Court, ordered the Trump Administration to “release and transmit any disbursements to the States on awarded grants, executed contracts or other executed financial obligations that were paused on the grounds of the OMB Directive” and other related Executive Orders. In his 45-page order, Judge McConnell held that the Trump Administration’s freeze on federal funding “fundamentally undermines” the separation of powers.

In support of their motion, the state attorneys general presented evidence of the widespread effects of the federal funding freeze, which they said has impacted “nearly all aspects of the States’ governmental operations” and has inhibited the States’ “ability to administer vital services to their residents.” These harms, they argued, are a direct result of the efforts taken by the Trump Administration to withhold federal funds and implement the federal funding freeze.

On January 31, 2025, Judge John McConnell of the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island granted the TRO sought by 22 state attorneys general and the Attorney General for the District of Columbia challenging the Trump Administration’s “pause” or “freeze” of grant funding payments.

The Court found that the attorneys general had a likelihood of success on the merits on their claims that the pause violated the Administrative Procedure Act, is arbitrary and capricious; violates separation of powers; and violates the Constitution’s Spending, Presentment, and Take Care clauses. The Court reached its determination “[b]ecause of the breadth and ambiguity of the ‘pause,’” and therefore anchored its reasoning “based on the effect it will have on many—but perhaps not all—grants and programs it is intended to cover.”

In rejecting the Administration’s argument that the Rescission Memo from OMB mooted the case, the Court relied upon a tweet by the White House Press Secretary –and an email from the EPA sent after the Rescission Memo stating that money would not be disbursed while the EPA determined how to implement the funding “freeze” memo from OMB. The Court found that “the OMB Directive that the States challenge here [is] still in full force and effect.”

To address the Administration’s statements that the “freeze” or “pause” would continue notwithstanding the Rescission Memo, the scope of the TRO prohibits the Trump Administration Defendants from “reissuing, adopting, implementing, or otherwise giving effect to the OMB Directive under any other name or title or through any other Defendants (or agency supervised, administered, or controlled by any Defendant), such as the continued implementation identified by the White House Press Secretary’s statement of January 29, 2025.”