What’s Going on in the Freeze Case?
Jonathan Adler [here and here] and Josh Blackman [here] have already commented on the Court’s decision Wednesday (available here) in the U.S. A.I.D. funding case (US Dep’t of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition). I have only a couple of additional thoughts.
In its current posture, the case is a procedural and jurisdictional mess – a request to (a) vacate an emergency “administrative stay” (granted by Chief Justice Roberts last week) of (b) a Feb. 25th district court order amending its (c) Feb 13th TRO forbidding Executive Branch officials from implementing President Trump’s Jan. 20th “Freeze” order (at least as it pertains to US A.I.D.). Those of you who do not enjoy contemplating the fine points regarding federal court jurisdiction might want to sit this one out; as Jonathan Adler points out, the underlying case is virtually certain to return to the Court, probably quite soon, shorn of some of its jurisdictional peculiarities, at which point the Court will presumably have the opportunity to address the (important) merits of the claim.
But if you do enjoy that sort of thing . . .
Here is the first sentence of Justice Alito’s dissenting opinion (joined by Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh):
Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? [emphases a
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