Five organizations filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department seeking to reverse the termination of a swath of department grant funding last month, arguing the decisions were unlawful and unconstitutional.
The complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which seeks class action status to cover other groups in a similar position, asks a judge to take several actions that would block the Justice Department from ending hundreds of millions of dollars in agreements and grants.
The terminated funding affects a wide range of topics, the lawsuit states, including grants related to violence reduction, victims’ services, juvenile justice and child protection.
The plaintiffs in the case are FORCE Detroit, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Health Resources in Action, Center for Children & Youth Justice and the Vera Institute of Justice.
The lawsuit asserts that the terminations “had an immediate and irreparable impact” on the organizations.
“These terminations have led to an abrupt discontinuation of vital services to some of the most vulnerable in our communities, making individuals and the communities in which they live less safe,” the lawsuit states.
The Office of Justice Programs, the department’s largest grantmaking component, sent the organizations an email saying their awards no longer effectuated “the program goals or agency priorities,” the lawsuit states.
The Justice Department has withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in congressionally appropriated funding, according to the lawsuit.
“This purposeful campaign of defiant refusal to spend congressional appropriations violates the constitutional separation of powers, which restrains the executive from interfering with Congress’ exclusive powers; the Spending Clause and Appropriations Clause, which give Congress alone the power of the purse,” the lawsuit states.
Defendants listed in the civil case are the Justice Department, Attorney General Pamela Bondi, the Office of Justice Programs and the office’s acting head, Maureen Henneberg.
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