Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0
By Jennifer Schutt | AZ Mirror
A federal judge will decide in “due course” whether to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from implementing the type of freeze on funding for grants and loans that it attempted to carry out in late January, before a separate court order blocked it from taking effect.
District Judge Loren L. AliKhan of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, who first issued an administrative stay in the case before filing a temporary restraining order, didn’t give an exact timeline for when she’ll issue her next ruling following the Thursday hearing. AliKhan’s TRO will remain in effect until she issues a ruling on the preliminary injunction.
A temporary restraining order generally lasts for a shorter period than a preliminary injunction, which can continue for months or years.
Kevin Friedl, senior counsel at Democracy Forward, and one of the attorneys representing the organizations that filed the lawsuit, argued during the hearing AliKhan should issue a preliminary injunction to prevent the Trump administration from moving forward with its plans to block funding to organizations throughout the country.
Friedl said that injunction should apply broadly, not just to the four organizations that filed the lawsuit and their members. Those organizations include the National Council of Nonprofits, American Public Health Association, Main Street Alliance and SAGE.
Those organizations, Friedl said, experienced an infringement on their First Amendment rights as a result of the Office of Management and Budget’s funding freeze. The groups now worry that if they “don’t adopt the policy positions of” the Trump administration, they could be blocked from receiving federal grants and loans in the future.
