U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as reporters ask questions aboard Air Force One during a flight from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Miami, Florida, U.S., January 25, 2025.
Leah Millis | Reuters
Non-profit groups and a small-business organization filed a lawsuit on Tuesday asking a judge to temporarily block a funding freeze ordered by the Trump administration of all federal grants and loans.
The lawsuit says the freeze imposed by the Office of Management and Budget is illegal.
The suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., blasts the OMB’s action, which became known Monday night through a memo.
“SNAP/EBT Food Stamp Benefits Accepted” is displayed on a screen inside a Family Dollar Stores Inc. store in Chicago, Illinois.
Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“This Memo — made public only through journalists’ reporting, with barely twenty four hours’ notice, devoid of any legal basis or the barest rationale — will have a devastating impact on hundreds of thousands of grant recipients who depend on the inflow of grant money (money already obligated and already awarded) to fulfill their missions, pay their employees, pay their rent — and, indeed, improve the day-to-day lives of the many people they work so hard to serve,” the suit says.
“Although the Trump Administration is at liberty to “advanc[e] [its] priorities,” it
must do so within the confines of the law. It has not,” the suit says.
“The Memo fails to explain the source of OMB’s purported legal authority to gut every grant program in the federal government; it fails to consider the reliance interest of the many grant recipients, including those to whom money had already been promised; and it announces a policy of targeting grant recipients based in part on those recipients’ First Amendment rights and with no bearing on the recipients’ eligibility to receive federal funds.”
The suit was filed by the National Council of Nonprofits, the American Public Health Association, the Main Street Alliance and the New York-based group SAGE.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, earlier Tuesday said he had been told the New York state attorney general’s office planned to file its own lawsuit challenging the OMB’s freeze.
New York AG Letitia James, in a tweet, wrote, “My office will be taking imminent legal action against this administration’s unconstitutional pause on federal funding.”
“We won’t sit idly by while this administration harms our families,” James wrote.
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