Who is a member?
Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
A coalition of 22 state attorneys general, including Andrea Joy Campbell of Massachusetts, filed a lawsuit today challenging the Trump administration’s “unlawful” attempts to invoke a single provision in federal regulations, known as the “agency priorities clause,” to strip away billions of dollars in federal grant funding for states and other grantees.
The lawsuit seeks to limit the Trump administration’s use of this regulation to “indiscriminately and illegally terminate critical funding” for combating violent crime, educating students, protecting clean drinking water, conducting lifesaving medical and scientific research, safeguarding public health, addressing food insecurity, and more.
In a prepared statement, Campbell said, “Congress controls the power of the purse and appropriates funds to ensure states have adequate resources to protect our residents’ safety and health while growing our economies.”
She said the lawsuit “seeks broad and forward-looking relief to stop this administration’s … unlawful funding cuts.”
Since Jan. 20, at the direction of President Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, federal agencies have stripped away thousands of grants that had been awarded to states and other grantees.
The Trump administration slashed the federal funding by invoking a single clause in the federal regulations of the Office of Management and Budget, which provides that agencies may terminate an award of federal funding if it “no longer effectuates … agency priorities.” Those five words have formed the basis for much of the Trump administration’s campaign to terminate funding authorized by Congress and awarded to states.
In Massachusetts, Campbell said, the Trump administration has cut off funding for programs that serve vulnerable communities. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture terminated a $11 million cooperative agreement with the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, which had supported 31 projects connecting nearly 500 local farmers and producers to more than 700 food distribution sites statewide, providing fresh, healthy food to residents across the state. And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency terminated a $1 million grant awarded to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to reduce asthma triggers in low-income communities in Springfield, Holyoke and Chicopee — areas with high rates of asthma due to aging housing stock. Both terminations cited the administration’s claim that these programs no longer aligned with shifting agency priorities.
The lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration’s use of the single regulation — the “agency priorities clause” — as a basis for slashing funding to states is a dramatic departure from past practice. Previously, federal agencies had not terminated grants “merely because the agency’s priorities shifted midway during the use of the grant.”
Under President Trump, the lawsuit says, federal agencies have “claimed unfettered authority to terminate grants” with no advance notice. In February, President Trump issued an executive order formally directing agencies — and the DOGE employees assigned to those agencies — to terminate grants en masse. And federal agencies have carried out that directive by invoking the regulation as grounds for terminating entire programs based on a purported shift in agency priorities, without notice to the states and in conflict with the federal statutes appropriating funding for the programs.
The lawsuit states that the agency priorities clause does not authorize federal agencies to terminate grants based on changes in agency preferences that occur after a grant is awarded. The lawsuit also notes the importance of obtaining clarity regarding the scope of the regulation, as states collectively accept hundreds of billions of dollars a year that are at risk of termination pursuant to the regulation.
The coalition filed the lawsuit against the OMB and a number of federal agencies that have relied on the agency priorities clause to collectively slash billions of dollars in federal funding to states: the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, Labor, and State, as well as the EPA, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Science Foundation.
The coalition filed the suit in the District of Massachusetts, seeking a declaratory judgment that the OMB regulation and defendants’ regulations do not independently authorize the Trump administration to terminate funding based on agency priorities that were identified after the grant was awarded. The coalition is also seeking to vacate the Trump administration’s decision to invoke the regulation as grounds for terminating billions of dollars of federal funding based on purported changes in agency priorities.
In addition to Campbell, the coalition filing the lawsuit includes the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.