March 18 (UPI) — A federal judge ruled Tuesday that efforts by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to shut down U.S. Agency for International Development “likely violated the U.S. Constitution in multiple ways.”
U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang ordered DOGE to reinstate USAID employee and contractors’ access to email, payment and other electronic systems, according to the 68-page ruling.
The judge also ordered DOGE to provide written confirmation of compliance to the court within a week and confirmation that USAID would reoccupy its headquarters within two weeks.
“The court will require defendants, within 14 days, to secure and submit a written agreement among all necessary parties that ensures that USAID will be able to reoccupy USAID headquarters at its original location, in the event of a final ruling in favor of plaintiffs,” the ruling states.
Chuang granted the preliminary injunction Tuesday after more than two dozen current and former USAID employees and contractors challenged efforts to close the foreign aid agency.
The judge said Musk, who is the founder of SpaceX and current adviser to President Donald Trump, most likely violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause and separation of powers.
“To deny plaintiffs’ Appointments Clause claim solely on the basis that, on paper, Musk has no formal legal authority relating to the decisions at issue, even if he is actually exercising significant authority on governmental matters, would open the door to an end-run around the Appointments Clause,” Chuang wrote.
“If a president could escape Appointments Clause scrutiny by having advisers go beyond the traditional role of White House advisers who communicate the president’s priority to agency heads and instead exercise significant authority throughout the federal government so as to bypass duly appointed officers, the Appointments Clause would be reduced to nothing more than a technical formality,” he wrote.
Musk was put in charge of DOGE by Trump, shortly after his inauguration in January, and announced plans to shut down USAID.
USAID, which administers billions of dollars in humanitarian aid to more than 100 countries, announced last month that most of its “direct hire” workers were being placed on leave as the agency prepared to be turned over to Secretary of State Marco Rubio‘s control.
The American Foreign Service Association has called the Trump administration’s decision to dismantle USAID a subversion of congressional authority because USAID “directly supports U.S. security and global stability.”
In Tuesday’s ruling, Chuang said Musk’s decision “usurped the authority of the public’s elected representatives in Congress to make decisions on whether, when and how to eliminate a federal government agency, and of officers of the United States duly appointed under the Constitution to exercise the authority entrusted to them.”
Musk responded to Tuesday’s decision in a post on X, referencing an article on Judge Chuang’s appointment by former President Barack Obama, with one word: “Indeed.”