US District Court Orders USAGM to Pay RFE/RL for Rest of Fiscal Year

Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has granted Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)’s request for a preliminary injunction in its lawsuit against the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

In his ruling, the judge ordered USAGM to timely disburse RFE/RL’s remaining congressionally appropriated funds for fiscal year 2025, concluding that the agency’s conditioning of funds on the imposition of onerous new grant terms and failure to engage in good-faith negotiations with RFE/RL violate the law.

Judge Lamberth wrote: “As far as this Court is aware, it is unprecedented for an agency to demand that entirely new terms govern its decades-old working relationship with a grantee entity and then stop responding, particularly when the agency is statutorily obligated to grant yearly congressional appropriations to that specific entity by name.” The Court stated that “USAGM’s flagrant disregard for its funding responsibilities” has caused RFE/RL to suffer “mass furloughs, cancelation of programming, and inevitable damage to the global influence that RFE/RL has built over decades.”

President and CEO Stephen Capus said:

“Today’s ruling by the Court is the culmination of relentless legal efforts to compel USAGM to release the funding necessary to carry out RFE/RL’s vital mission. Time and again, the Court has ruled in our favor on the basic issue of the release of our congressionally appropriated funds.

This victory provides our journalists with the momentum necessary to continue reaching the nearly 47 million people each week who rely on our journalism for the facts and to counter malicious propaganda from authoritarian governments. Now more than ever, we cannot cede the information space to tyrants.

With this ruling, RFE/RL can continue to advance U.S. national security interests.”