Judge certifies class in lawsuit on behalf of ex-USAID workers, contractors

A federal judge in Maryland on Monday ruled that employees and personal service contractors at the U.S. Agency for International Development may pursue their legal challenge against the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the agency as a class.

U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang previously ruled in March that the administration and erstwhile Department of Governmental Efficiency leader Elon Musk likely violated constitutional separation of powers and the Appropriations Clause when they moved to close the foreign aid agency and fold its duties into the State Department’s portfolio. But an appeals court put enforcement of that decision on hold while litigation continues.

Chuang beat back arguments from the Trump administration that the proposed class—all USAID employees and personal service contractors who were employed by or contracted to the agency on Jan. 27—was overbroad because it included employees who may have resigned or retired after officials ordered its closure.

“The present case involves claims of an explicit, overarching policy to eliminate and shut down USAID as an independent agency, which necessarily impacted all personnel in that everyone would eventually lose their positions at that agency,” Chuang wrote. “Thus, under these highly unusual circumstances, working at USAID would, in fact, place someone in the category of those who were or would likely be injured by the total shutdown of USAID . . . As for defendants’ argument that the proposed class is overbroad because it includes PSCs such as J. Doe 29, the court finds that such personnel are properly part of the same class because, as for the employee plaintiffs, the general policy of shutting down USAID necessarily injures all PSCs in that their contracts to work for USAID will not continue.”

As the case moves forward, Chaung wrote that the court will examine the following questions: for the purposes of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, whether Musk was the “de facto” administrator of DOGE, whether he made the initial decision to dismantle USAID, and whether such a decision is constitutes exercising “significant authority” that can only be taken by an officer of the U.S. And on separation of powers issues, the court will investigate whether the administration’s actions have “collectively eliminated USAID as an independent agency,” and whether that action violates the Supreme Court’s separation of powers test laid out in the 1952 Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer decision.

The move to certify the class in the lawsuit, initially filed by more than two dozen anonymous USAID staffers and contractors, comes after Chuang last week rejected the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss the case altogether, on the grounds that the plaintiffs should first pursue their claims through the U.S. Office of Special Counsel or the Merit Systems Protection Board. While the MSPB generally has exclusive jurisdiction to hear cases regarding adverse personnel actions, Chuang noted that reductions in force fall outside of its purview.

 “Specifically, as alleged in the second amended complaint, plaintiffs’ claims, and their injuries, flow not from any specific employment action, but from the decision to dismantle and abolish USAID entirely,” Chuang wrote. “Channeling the claims of the civil service employee plaintiffs to the MSPB would foreclose meaningful judicial review because even if they were able to prevail in the administrative proceedings as to any particular employment action, such as by securing reinstatement to a USAID position, that relief would be meaningless because if the dismantling and abolition of USAID remain unaddressed, the civil service employee plaintiffs would have no workplace to which to return.”