President Trump, upon taking office, issued a series of executive orders claiming to pause or terminate over a trillion dollars in congressionally appropriated funding for programs created by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. In furtherance of these orders, federal agencies began terminating entire grant programs en masse. 

Several community groups and cities whose grants were suspended or terminated challenged the administration’s actions in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, seeking to restart the vital programming Congress entrusted to them.  

The district court issued several injunctions ordering the Trump administration to restore funding, and the administration appealed to the Fourth Circuit. A motions panel granted the federal government’s request to stay the district court’s injunction pending appeal and ordered expedited briefing on the merits.  

In July 2025, the Constitutional Accountability Center filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs on the merits, explaining why the Fourth Circuit should affirm the district court, with a particular focus on the plaintiffs’ constitutional claims. Our brief made three main points. 

First, the Constitution’s separation of powers prohibits the President from impounding federal funds based on disagreement with congressional policy. The text, history, and structure of the Appropriations and Spending Clauses all demonstrate that Congress has the exclusive power of the purse. Specifically, the Spending Clause grants Congress the sweeping power to spend for the ”common Defence and general Welfare of the United States,” while the Appropriations Clause limits executive authority over finances by stating that “[n]o Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”  These provisions were crafted in response to the English monarch’s abuse of the purse strings. And since the Founding, all three branches of government have consistently interpreted them, alongside structural separation-of-powers principles, to bar unilateral executive withholding of appropriated funding. 

Second, because the Trump administration unilaterally terminated grant agreements based on disagreement with the congressional policies underlying them, the executive branch violated the Constitution’s separation of powers. Rather than defend its actions on the merits, the Trump administration claims that under the Supreme Court’s decision in Dalton v. Specter, the plaintiffs’ separation-of-powers claim is just a dressed-up statutory claim that should be channeled to the Court of Federal Claims pursuant to the Tucker Act. However, Defendants overread Dalton and misunderstand the separation-of-powers claim in this case. Under Dalton, a plaintiff may still bring a freestanding constitutional claim when an executive official violates a constitutional prohibition, or when an executive official engages in an action with neither statutory nor constitutional power. That is precisely what the plaintiffs in this case have alleged, and the record bears it out. Thus, this case is more like the famous separation-of-powers case Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer than Dalton. 

Third, because the plaintiffs assert bona fide constitutional claims premised on the executive branch’s usurpation of Congress’s authority over appropriations and spending, channeling those claims to the Court of Federal Claims—a court that indisputably lacks jurisdiction to hear them—pursuant to the Tucker Act would raise serious constitutional concerns. The Supreme Court has repeatedly avoided those constitutional problems by reading federal statutes as not stripping all judicial review of colorable constitutional claims. 

In January 2026, the Fourth Circuit vacated the district court’s judgment, holding that, under Dalton, the plaintiffs’ separation-of-powers claim was really just a claim that the Trump administration had violated various statutory provisions. This decision is at odds with a proper interpretation of Dalton and the well-established constitutional principle that the President cannot unilaterally cancel a statutorily mandated program.