Ninth Circuit: Trump admin can’t defund LA homeless services agency

Filed 1h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Andrey Butko · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A Ninth Circuit panel refused Thursday to let the Trump administration cut off funding to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, upholding a lower court's injunction. The judges found HUD hadn't adequately explained why it suspended the beleaguered agency mid-grant-cycle after having approved it as collaborative applicant while aware of misconduct allegations for years.

The ruling keeps money flowing and lets LAHSA keep applying for grants ahead of an Oct. 14 deadline, while oral arguments on the underlying injunction proceed next month. One Trump-appointed judge dissented, arguing Congress had already contemplated this kind of defunding.

HUD Secretary Scott Turner had framed the cutoff as ending funding for the 'homeless industrial complex.' LA County and the city, meanwhile, are separately moving to strip LAHSA of its money and build their own agencies, suggesting the authority's troubles run well past whatever this ruling settles.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A federal agency says it found fraud, then can't explain to a judge why the fix had to happen overnight, mid-cycle, after years of looking the other way. That is not a paperwork problem, that is a story somebody wrote after they'd already decided the ending. The people sleeping in cars this week don't much care which acronym wins in court, they just want the lights to stay on.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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