The court ruled against the temporary restraining order, granting the Trump administration’s request to allow it to halt funding of previously approved education grants until a federal appellate court rules in the matter.

Federal government is likely to succeed

“The district court’s ‘basis for issuing the order [is]strongly challenged’ as the government is likely to succeed in showing the district court lacked jurisdiction to order the payment of money under the [Administrative Procedure Act],” the three-page, unattributed SCOTUS ruling says.

“The district court’s order also carries many of the hallmarks of a preliminary injunction,” the SCOTUS ruling says.

The U.S. District Court for Massachusetts on March 10 granted a temporary restraining order to stop the Trump administration from halting funding for education-related grants and extended the order on March 24.

“The order also requires the government to pay out past-due grant obligations and to continue paying obligations as they accrue,” the SCOTUS ruling says.

“But, as we have recognized, the APA’s limited waiver of immunity does not extend to orders ‘to enforce a contractual obligation to pay money.'”

Such legal challenges are the jurisdiction of the Court of Federal Claims, the ruling says.

Withdrawn grant funds are unlikely to be recovered

The 5-3 SCOTUS ruling agrees with the federal government’s argument that it is unlikely to recover grant funds once they are disbursed.

“No grantee ‘promised to return withdrawn funds should its grant termination be re-instated,'” the SCOTUS majority decision says, adding that the district court also did not impose a bond on the grantees to ensure the potential return of withdrawn funds.

“By contrast, the government compellingly argues that respondents would not suffer irreparable harm while the temporary restraining order is stayed,” the SCOTUS ruling says. “Respondents have represented … that they have the financial wherewithal to keep their programs running.”

The ruling says that if the plaintiffs eventually prevail in their claims against the Trump administration, they can recover any wrongfully withheld funds.

“If respondents instead decline to keep the programs operating, then any ensuring irreparable harm would be of their own making,” the majority opinion says.

The district court ruling said that plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed based on their claims under the APA, which grants sovereign immunity to the federal government.

“Sovereign immunity means that ‘the United States cannot be sued in their courts without their consent,'” according to the Administrative Conference of the United States.

“‘Congress has an absolute discretion to specify the cases and contingencies in which the liability of the government is submitted to the. courts for judicial determination,'” the ACUS says.

Trump administration challenges district court’s ruling

The Trump administration and the Department of Education on March 26 appealed the lower court’s restraining order and sought to have the ruling vacated.

The appeal also sought an immediate administrative stay of the order requiring the government to pay past-due grants and other funding obligations.

The SCOTUS blocked the lower court’s restraining order against the Trump administration pending the outcome of the case that now is before the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito Jr., Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch ruled in favor of overturning the temporary restraining order.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. did not rule in the matter but said he would have joined Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissenting.

Kagan’s dissenting opinion said the SCOTUS’ decision harms states, many of which have curtailed teacher training programs due to a lack of grant funding.

Brown Jackson likewise said the SCOTUS ruling inflicts “significant harms on plaintiff states” and the ruling is “entirely unwarranted.”

“We do not ordinarily exercise jurisdiction over TROs, and this one is no different,” she said.