USCCB: State Dept. termination of refugee agreement is ‘unlawful’
Conference lawyers argue the move 'doubles down on an unlawful refusal to comply' with legal obligations
Lawyers for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told a judge Thursday that the State Department's move to cancel a contract for refugee resettlement is “unlawful” and should be overturned.
The argument came just one day after the State Department abruptly canceled a longstanding refugee services contract with the bishops’ conference, amid a USCCB lawsuit over back pay and a freeze on federal migration dollars.
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In a Feb. 27 filing from the USCCB, lawyers responded to a same-day notification from the State Department, which said it had terminated its agreements with the conference to provide legally-required resettlement services to refugees.
The bishops’ lawyers argued Thursday that the termination “doubles down on [the government’s] unlawful refusal to comply with its statutory and regulatory obligations,” and aims “to end funding for thousands of refugees who have already arrived and been placed in USCCB’s programs.”
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The bishops’ conference filed suit against the government on Feb. 18, after the State Department decided Jan. 24 that it would freeze funding for a swath of programs, including the refugee assistance programs for which it had contracts with the bishops’ conference, which coordinated and distributed funds to Catholic Charities agencies engaged in direct resettlement work.
In the suit’s filing, the bishops argued that freeze denied to refugees a legally established right to federally-funded resettlement assistance, “which is essential to helping them establish a new home.”
The bishops also argued that the federal government owed more than $20 million for services completed in recent months, and should be compelled to pay according to the terms of its contracts.
In response to the lawsuit, the government last week terminated the suspended agreement and argued that the bishops’ conference could not seek repayment for unreimbursed expenses incurred as part of their contracted work via the suit.
The State Department told a federal judge that because of the termination, the bishops would have to seek reimbursement via “available administrative channels” outside the lawsuit — suggesting effectively that the suit should be dismissed.
But in their response Thursday, the conference’s lawyers argued that “the [contract] termination effects a government-wide refusal to spend funds that Congress appropriated for a statutorily mandated purpose based on a policy disagreement.”
“The suspension continues to inflict irreparable harm on USCCB because, as the termination notices make clear, the suspension is the reason that the government will continue to deny reimbursement requests for costs USCCB and its partners incurred between January 24 and February 27 — preventing USCCB from receiving the funds necessary to carry out its mission to assist the refugees the government already placed in its car,” they added.
The bishops also argued that canceling the contract directly denies the legal rights of refugees:
“The government’s purported termination of USCCB’s awards while refugees remain in their initial 90-day resettlement period violates the Refugee Act, the Impoundment Control Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.”
The bishops’ conference lawyers argued that the court should not dismiss the lawsuit because of the terminated contract. “The government cannot escape review of its unlawful suspension by effecting an unlawful termination,” they explained.
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While the lawsuit continues, the bishops have argued that federal Judge Trevor McFadden should force the federal government to make good on the money owed to the conference.
But McFadden denied that request Feb. 20, concluding that the bishops had not shown that reinstating the funds during the lawsuit’s course was necessary to avoid "irreparable harm” to the bishops’ conference.
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The U.S. bishops’ conference had been awarded federal funds since 1980 to provide “vetted and approved” refugees with “transitional support” of housing and employment search assistance during their first 90 days in the U.S.
The termination is likely to significantly curtail Catholic-led refugee resettlement programs across the country, which serve thousands of refugees annually, and lead to layoffs at the bishops’ conference and at Catholic Charities agencies.
On Feb. 7, the bishops’ conference laid off 50 people, roughly one-third of staff members in its migration and refugee services office, in response to the federal reimbursement freeze. The cancellation of future federal funds could see most of the remaining USCCB staffers working on resettlement programs laid off.
For their part, the bishops argue that refugees have a legally established right to federally-funded resettlement assistance, “which is essential to helping them establish a new home.”
Resettlement help “promotes the successful settlement of refugees in their communities, including by promoting gainful employment or connections to educational opportunities, thereby diminishing the likelihood that newly arriving refugees will be dependent on ongoing public support,” the conference told McFadden’s court.
Outside Washington, Catholic Charities agencies have already begun laying off employees working in refugee resettlement — in one case, terminating 20% of its work force in response to the federal funding freeze.
Moral correctness has nothing to do with the fact that the federal government can issue stop work orders on contracts. It doesn’t matter whether the USCCB has moral standing; the interests of the government are the final determining factor. That’s the problem with government contracts: you are at the mercy of the whims of the current administration in power. There’s a saying that working with the federal government is like wrestling with a pig: everyone gets dirty and the pig loves it.
The USCCB is morally right, here, of course. I am not sure they will win the legal argument because the Constitutional concerns implicated here are already in a state of long-deferred crisis. It is a good theory of the case, though. And they're in the right.