You lose some, you win some. In the case of the Trump administration, it seems they're losing more at the district court level (see, e.g, Tuesday morning's ruling from Judge Charles Breyer in the case involving deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles) and winning more in the appellate courts — and I'll maintain my prediction that when all is said and done, the balance of the appellate court rulings will land in the administration's favor because the actions the administration has been taking appear to be pretty well gamed out.
Case in point: The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has again handed the administration a win with a 2-1 decision handed down late Tuesday morning in a case involving EPA grants. Remember the stories about the gold bars being (figuratively) pitched overboard in the waning days of the Biden administration? Yep, those are the funds at the heart of this litigation.
We're back to the familiar panel of Judges Katsas, Rao, and Pillard, and once again, Katsas and Rao (both Trump appointees) are in the majority, with Pillard (an Obama appointee) filing a dissent.
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Judge Rao authored this opinion, holding that District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan abused her discretion in issuing an injunction against the administration back in April.
The crux of the decision is this:
We conclude the district court abused its discretion in issuing the injunction. The grantees are not likely to succeed on the merits because their claims are essentially contractual, and therefore jurisdiction lies exclusively in the Court of Federal Claims. And while the district court had jurisdiction over the grantees’ constitutional claim, that claim is meritless. Moreover, the equities strongly favor the government, which on behalf of the public must ensure the proper oversight and management of this multi-billion-dollar fund. Accordingly, we vacate the injunction.
But in issuing the decision, Judge Rao hearkened back to the hubbub over the "gold bars" story:
The sheer scale of the grant program and the method of allocating billions of dollars drew public attention and criticism. The record includes a widely publicized video in which an EPA employee was recorded describing how “until recently” his role was to make sure proper “processes are inplace to … prevent fraud and to prevent abuse,” but after the election of President Donald Trump, EPA was “just trying to get the money out as fast as possible before they come in and … stop it all.” J.A. 705 n.1. The employee compared the situation to “throwing gold bars off the Titanic.”
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Rao further explained how the factors that go into determining whether an injunction is proper counsel against an injunction as to these funds:
The balance of the equities and the public interest factors similarly favor the government. The injunction harms the government and the public interest by preventing the Executive Branch from properly and prudently managing billions of dollars in public funds. The grantees have an interest in continued access to government funding. But the government and the public have a stronger interest in protecting the public fisc and eliminating the appearance of impropriety around these grant programs.
Moreover, if the grant terminations are later determined to be a breach of contract, the government may be required to pay damages to the grantees, which would substantially, if not entirely, redress the grantees’ interim injuries. By contrast, if the government’s position is eventually vindicated, it will have no apparent means to recover funds spent down while the litigation has run its course. See Nat’l Institutes of Health, 2025WL 2415669, at *1 (Order) (recognizing irreparable harm to the government because the grant “funds cannot be recouped and are thus irrevocably expended”) (cleaned up). The government’s (and the public’s) harm from an erroneous injunction is thus irreparable in a way that the grantees’ harm from an erroneous contract termination is not.
As Rao rightly notes, there is a proper jurisdiction for claims of the nature brought by these grantees, and that is the Court of Federal Claims — and even that court may not issue injunctive relief. "The public interest favors limiting federal courts to the jurisdiction and remedies provided by Congress."
In issuing Tuesday's ruling, the court ordered that its mandate be withheld in order to allow time for a motion for rehearing en banc, which the plaintiff/grantees in this case almost certainly will file. And, as we've noted in cases with similar panel rulings, the full D.C. Circuit is composed of more Democrat-appointed judges than Republican-appointed judges and may tend to lean in opposition to this administration. But there's no guarantee of that, as we saw last week with the full court voting not to rehear the USAID funding case en banc. Either way, we'll be following this one as well and report on any further updates as warranted.
Editor's Note: Unelected federal judges are hijacking President Trump's agenda and insulting the will of the people
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