A federal judge in Maryland has issued a temporary restraining order against the Justice Department for terminating grants from the Office on Violence Against Women to the American Bar Association, finding that the decision was likely retaliation for the group's criticism of President Donald Trump and therefore a violation of the First Amendment.
The grants provided $3.2 million to the bar association to train lawyers to represent survivors of domestic and sexual violence. After Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche canceled the payments, they said it was because the association was engaged in "activist causes" that ran against the Justice Department's mission, but did not elaborate further. However, per The Guardian, this decision came after the bar association publicly said Trump's mass firings at federal agencies were unlawful, and Trump hit back, calling the legal trade group a "snooty" bunch of "leftist lawyers."
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The ABA sued over the cancellations, arguing it amounted to retaliation for political speech. The DOJ disputed this and further argued the court lacked jurisdiction to even hear the case.
In a ruling issued on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, sided with the ABA, finding that the Trump administration's arguments made no sense.
"The government claims that it had a nonretaliatory motive for terminating the grants: They no longer aligned with DOJ’s priorities," wrote Cooper. "But the government has not identified any nonretaliatory DOJ priorities, much less explained why they were suddenly deemed inconsistent with the goals of the affected grants."
Moreover, the judge continued, "the government’s different treatment of other grantees suggests this justification is pretextual. DOJ did not terminate any other OVW grants, and, at oral argument, the government conceded that other grant recipients continue to conduct similar training functions with OVW money ... The government has offered no nonretaliatory explanation for why it continues to fund these other OVW grantees after terminating the ABA’s grants, or why these other grantees’ projects still effectuate DOJ’s priorities while the ABA’s do not. Finally, DOJ also purported to terminate two grants that, by their terms, had already ended, making it even less plausible that DOJ conducted an individualized analysis of whether each grant aligned with DOJ policy."
"Based on all this, the Court cannot but conclude that the ABA is likely to succeed on its claim that Defendants terminated the agreements because of its protected activity in violation of the First Amendment," concluded Cooper.
