President Donald Trump listens during a briefing with the media, Friday, June 27, 2025, at the White House in Washington (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).
A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to restore funding to AmeriCorps volunteer service programs and reinstate workers who were booted without notice earlier this year, a little over a month after another judge halted plans to dismantle the government agency.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Maddox referred to Baltimore-based U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman”s June 5 ruling throughout his 63-page order as he handed down a preliminary injunction blocking plans by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to defund and shut down AmeriCorps programs such as the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC), Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and the Volunteer Generation Fund (VGF).
AmeriCorps workers teamed up with Democracy Defenders Fund and other nonprofits to sue the Trump administration in May for the money cuts and firings issued in April. They had asked Maddox to bring back the employees who were laid off and return roughly $400 million in funding that got slashed, and Maddox — a Joe Biden appointee — obliged.
“They make a clear showing that this ‘dismantling’ consisted of several discrete agency actions: a categorical termination of all NCCC projects and participants … a sweeping cancellation of approximately $400,000,000 in AmeriCorps grants, including Nonprofit Plaintiffs’ grants and subgrants … a mass termination of more than 600 AmeriCorps employees, amounting to 85% of the staff, through placement on administrative leave on April 16, 2025, and issuance of RIF [reduction-in-force] notices on April 24, 2025,” Maddox said.
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“In short, Nonprofit Plaintiffs have been injured in their ability to operate and perform core activities, and these injuries are traceable directly to defendants’ actions — not decisions made by third parties,” Maddox concluded. “Nonprofit Plaintiffs’ injuries are traceable to defendants’ actions in terminating grants and subgrants, closing AmeriCorps programs, and placing AmeriCorps staff on leave.”
The plaintiffs accuse Trump administration officials of “constitutional, statutory, and regulatory violations” — specifically, that the government acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” by categorically terminating grants, shutting down the NCCC, and instituting RIFs. They also allege that the Trump administration “unreasonably withheld agency action” by cutting Congressionally mandated programs and withholding appropriated funds.
“The foregoing discrete agency actions all occurred within a period of less than two weeks and reflect a final and categorical decision on part of defendants either to eliminate or reduce to a significant degree AmeriCorps’ ability to operate as required by statute,” Maddox said, adding that each move was a “final agency action” subject to judicial review.
“As recently found by Judge Boardman in Maryland v. AmeriCorps: ‘The decision to close AmeriCorps programs was a final agency action. The termination letters said as much. The agency told AmeriCorps award recipients that the award termination, program closure, and forced exit or removal of AmeriCorps and VISTA members is ‘a final agency action and is not administratively appealable,'” Maddox added. “The programs have provided valuable — and, in some cases, essential — services to communities across the country, and defendants’ likely unlawful actions have deprived these communities of these services.”
His order calls for the reinstatement of three AmeriCorps participants and about 400 members of the AmeriCorps Employees Union and American Federation of State County & Municipal Employees, plaintiffs in the lawsuit, along with demanding that the Trump administration respond and file a status report within 24 hours.
No filings had been made as of 10 a.m. EST Tuesday.
Boardman, another Biden appointee, also granted a preliminary injunction in her case that was sought by a coalition of 24 Democratic states, which sued in response to DOGE cutting AmeriCorps’ funding and terminating 85% of its workforce. The staffing and funding cuts were part of the administration’s ongoing efforts to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy.
In the 86-page order, Boardman reasoned that the administration’s abrupt dismantling of AmeriCorps — specifically, the cutting of millions in funding appropriated by Congress — violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). She wrote that the agency’s “failure to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking before closing AmeriCorps programs” was “not in accordance with the law.”
Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.
