In an April 28 filing, lawyers for the American Library Association rebutted legal arguments by the Trump Administration that the association lacks standing to pursue an injunction blocking the administration’s destruction of the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). And in a statement that echoes arguments made in similar lawsuits against the administration—including in a case filed by 21 states that also seeks to save the IMLS—ALA lawyers insist that DOJ lawyers have “not proffered even a fragment of proof” to rebut the evidence in this case.
“Once again, the government asserts that constitutional and [Administrative Procedures Act] claims are speculative and unripe because the agency’s complete demise has not yet been fully accomplished. Once again it claims that plaintiffs suffering real harms have no standing, that constitutional claims should be read as contract disputes and dispatched to the Court of Federal Claims, that the separation of powers and the Take Care Clause are meaningless, that the APA can be ignored, and that any harm is speculative and easily remediable by a damages remedy years from now,” the ALA reply brief opens. “And Defendants once again ignore that, in case after case, the well-reasoned opinions of courts, in this District and elsewhere, have shot down these arguments.”
The ALA’s reply comes after DOJ lawyers on April 21 filed a lengthy 59-page opposition brief, in which the administration argued that the ALA not only lacks standing to pursue their claims in federal court, but the ALA’s claims are unripe because IMLS isn’t really being shut down, but rather is in the early stages of a restructuring.
“Defendants’ contention that Plaintiffs’ claims are unripe badly misunderstands the record,” ALA lawyers counter, in their reply.
“The uncontradicted evidence shows that about 85% of IMLS’ staff was put on administrative leave at the end of March and will be fired by May 4. The remaining staff cannot perform key agency functions, including evaluating and awarding grants, timely issuing funds, terminating grants in compliance with the law, or reviewing appeals of terminations. Nor can they process reimbursements for funds already expended by recipients; all the IMLS personnel responsible for processing reimbursements have been put on leave, and the only person left who has access to the system has no experience using it,” ALA lawyers point out. “Thus, there is no factual dispute that IMLS has already taken numerous actions to shutter IMLS.”
ALA lawyers also point out the disingenuous nature of the argument made by DOJ lawyers that IMLS—which was created by Congress—is being transformed, not summarily destroyed by the administration.
“To characterize terminating 85% of the agency’s staff in one fell swoop, such that it no longer has the personnel necessary to perform statutorily mandated functions, freezing the processing of grant funds, and terminating grants en masse as ‘administrative decisions’ committed to agency discretion, is absurd,” the brief argues. “Defendants do not have discretion under any source of law to incapacitate IMLS. The Constitution confers such authority on the legislature, not the executive branch, and Congress has not enacted any statute providing such authority to Defendants.”
By issuing an executive order that substantively destroys the IMLS “to the point of preventing it from fulfilling its statutory mission,” Trump has “effectively repealed the Museum and Library Services Act and subsequent reauthorizations,” the brief adds. “In so doing, he has overstepped the separation of powers by interfering with the authority of Congress, and he has failed to fulfill his responsibility to take care that the laws of the United States be faithfully executed.”
The filing comes after the ALA filed suit on April 7 in federal court in Washington D.C., joined by AFSCME/AFL-CIO as co-plaintiffs, seeking to block the Trump administration’s bid to effectively destroy the IMLS. The suit argues that Trump’s March 14 executive order, and subsequent actions taken by acting director Keith Sonderling to comply with that order, run afoul of “Congress’s appropriations authority, the separation of powers,” and violates the Administrative Procedure Act by acting “contrary to law, and arbitrarily and capriciously.”
With the filing, the ALA’s motion for a preliminary injunction is now fully briefed and ready for a scheduled April 30 hearing in Washington D.C. before federal judge Richard Leon. The ALA has asked the court to rule on their motion for an injunction by May 4, reportedly the date at which IMLS employees placed on administrative leave are due to be terminated.
Meanwhile, a federal court in Rhode Island could rule any day now on a similar legal bid filed by 21 states that also seeks to save the IMLS along with six other agencies targeted in Trump’s March 14 executive order.
