A federal appeals court reversed a lower court’s ruling, allowing the Trump administration to suspend or terminate billions in foreign aid funding.

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overruled a prior decision prohibiting the Trump administration from cutting USAID funding approved by Congress.

According to ABC News, the court did not address the constitutionality of the cuts but instead declared that the nonprofits suing the Trump administration lacked standing.

ABC News has more:

Judges Karen Henderson and Gregory Katsas — appointed by Presidents George H. W. Bush and Donald Trump, respectively — determined that only the head of the Government Accountability Office has the authority to sue under the Impoundment Control Act.

“The district court erred in granting that relief because the grantees lack a cause of action to press their claims,” the majority wrote.

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The lawsuit over USAID funding had been one of the first major legal successes for nonprofits challenging the Trump administration, which ordered the suspension of grants that didn’t comply with the president’s priorities.

After U.S. District Judge Amir Ali issued a temporary restraining order in February blocking Trump’s executive order from taking effect, both the D.C. circuit court and the United States Supreme Court sided with the nonprofits, denying a request from the Trump administration to block an order enforcing the TRO.

In a dissenting opinion issued with Wednesday’s ruling, Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee, criticized her colleagues for ignoring the concern that the funding cuts were unconstitutional and thus harmed “the rule of law and the very structure of our government.”

“The majority opinion thus misconstrues the separation-of-powers claim brought by the grantees, misapplies precedent, and allows Executive Branch officials to evade judicial review of constitutionally impermissible actions,” Pan wrote, according to the Associated Press.

The case involved cuts to nearly $4 billion in global health programs and over $6 billion for HIV/AIDS programs.

CNN noted:

The decision, however, doesn’t wholesale end legal challenges around USAID. Some of the ongoing legal challenges over USAID grants regard the fulfillment of contracts rather than budget allocations in the future. The court noted that the federal government has paid “substantially all of the amounts owed on existing contracts for work” earlier this year.

The court found on Wednesday that only the Comptroller General, which is part of the legislative branch of government in the Government Accountability Office, has the ability to sue the executive over alleged impoundment.

“Here, the (Impoundment Control Act) created a complex scheme of notification of the Congress, congressional action on a proposed rescission or deferral and suit by a specified legislative branch official if the executive branch violates its statutory expenditure obligations,” Henderson, a Reagan appointee, wrote in the opinion. “It does not make sense that the Congress would craft a complex scheme of interbranch dialogue but sub silentio also provide a backdoor for citizen suits at any time and without notice to the Congress of the alleged violation.”

 

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