Counsel for the American Bar Association filed a lawsuit Tuesday alleging the ABA’s international human rights program is suffering “grievous irreparable harm” from the President Donald Trump administration pausing foreign aid and “dismantling” the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“Plaintiff ABA has had tens of millions of dollars in USAID and State Department funding frozen,” Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer litigators wrote in a complaint on behalf of the ABA. “This freeze has decimated ABA’s programs, including its efforts to protect religious freedom in Asia, fight human trafficking in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Colombia, prepare Ukraine to recover from Russia’s invasion, advance democracy in Myanmar, and combat money laundering and terrorism in South America.”