In Emergency Ruling, US Appeals Court Reverses Halt To Funding For Radio Free Europe

A US appeals court issued a ruling that advances efforts by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) to secure congressionally mandated funds it sorely needs to keep operations going in the coming weeks, pausing a decision delivered just hours earlier by a three-judge panel of the same court.

The new ruling, issued late on May 7 by the full 11-judge bench of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, imposed an “administrative stay” on the panel’s decision to put on hold a lower court’s ruling in the case, which pits RFE/RL against its overseer, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

RFE/RL has sued USAGM to release frozen budget funds for the second half of the current fiscal year, from April through September.

On April 29, US District Judge Royce Lamberth granted RFE/RL a temporary restraining order, ruling that Congress "ordained that the monies at issue should be allocated to RFE/RL" and that President Donald Trump signed the budget resolution appropriating those funds. His decision ordered payment to be made to RFE/RL for April, about $12 million.

On May 7, however, the three-judge appeals court panel issued a 2-1 ruling staying Lamberth’s order pending appeal, decreasing RFE/RL’s chances of receiving the April funding anytime soon and putting its already substantially scaled-back operations deeper into jeopardy.

Hours later, though, the full 11-member court responded to an emergency petition from RFE/RL and imposed a pause on the panel’s ruling “pending further order of the court.”

In its decision, which also covered other suits involving USAGM, the court emphasized that the stay was meant to give it “sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency petitions and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of those petitions.”

The ruling, by a 7-4 vote with the court’s four Republican-appointed judges dissenting, means that USAGM must comply with Judge Lamberth’s April 29 order to pay RFE/RL.

While the latest administrative stay is not the court’s final ruling, USAGM can appeal it to the US Supreme Court, which could consider the case or decline to do so.

RFE/RL is a private, independent international news organization whose programs on multiple platforms reach a weekly audience of nearly 50 million people in 23 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nations of Central Asia and the Caucasus.

It has been locked in a legal fight with the USAGM since March 14, when Trump signed an executive order calling for the reduction of USAGM and the broadcasters it oversees – including the Voice of America (VOA), which unlike RFE/RL is a federal entity -- to "the maximum extent consistent with applicable law."

Deprived of funding for April and beyond, RFE/RL has continued to broadcast and publish, but has taken drastic cost-cutting measures to stretch its dwindling savings, including placing hundreds of staffers on furlough and canceling many freelance contracts.