Justice Initiative Files Appellate Court Brief Challenging Unlawful Dismantling of Foreign Aid
NEW YORK—The Open Society Justice Initiative has submitted arguments before the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a case challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and unlawfully terminate life-saving foreign assistance. These actions have had devastating impacts, resulted in foreseeable deaths, and imperiled the lives of millions who are at imminent risk of preventable illness and harms that endanger the very ability to survive. The Justice Initiative filed this amicus curiae brief as co-counsel with Physicians for Human Rights and on behalf of people impacted in Africa, offering the Court perspectives otherwise absent: voices of those confronting the human cost of the U.S. government’s decisions and are suffering irreparable harm.
The brief shows in real terms the life-or-death consequences that follow when funds Congress appropriated are not spent and longstanding U.S. systems that sustained global health are gutted. It details the rising and immediate human costs of these decisions, which have halted efforts to contain disease, deliver lifesaving care, and advance medical research. The brief documents how medical clinics across Africa have shuttered; pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa have lost access to safe delivery services; and children facing malnutrition have been cut off from food. People living with HIV in countries like Kenya have suddenly lost access to lifesaving medication, resulting in deaths and the risk of a rapid resurgence of AIDS, while mother-to-newborn HIV transmission in countries like Uganda has increased, a devastating reversal after years of near elimination.
The Trump administration’s harmful decisions have devastated critical health services on which millions depend for survival. In Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, health workers report a rise in preventable deaths after USAID-funded services collapsed. The brief warns that failure to restore U.S. systems could result in “catastrophic harm” to global and U.S. health—a form of “public man-made death,” a mass loss of life arising directly from the administration’s decisions.
James A. Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, said:
“The Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID is claiming lives, devastating health services, and spreading disease. Our amicus brief brings to the court’s attention the life-or-death consequences of the decision, and the voices of those suffering directly as a result of them.”
The Justice Initiative had previously filed an amicus curiae brief in the consolidated case of AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. U.S. Department of State / Global Health Council v. Donald J. Trump et al.