Supreme Court rules Trump administration must unfreeze foreign aid payments

A sharply divided Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration must comply with a district court order and pay out nearly $2 billion in foreign assistance funds to nonprofit aid groups for work already completed on the government's behalf.

The court ruled 5-4 with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett siding with the liberal justices.

The court did not elaborate on the decision but said the district court judge should "clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines."

A lower court judge is currently weighing whether or not to impose a longer-term preliminary injunction against the foreign aid freeze.

Justice Samuel Alito said in his dissent that he was "stunned" by the majority's decision.

"Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) $2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic "No," but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise," he wrote.

The Trump administration did not immediately comment on the ruling.

The court's majority did not specify a deadline by which the administration needed to comply.

The administration initially tried to freeze the payments via an executive order before U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali ordered the payments to resume in a temporary restraining order issued three weeks ago.

Last week, Ali, a Biden appointee, ruled the administration violated the terms of a temporary restraining order and ordered the Trump administration to dole out delayed payments by 11:59 p.m. Feb. 26.

Lawyers with the Department of Justice acknowledged that the Trump administration ignored the temporary restraining order, which prohibited them from freezing foreign aid funds since the order was issued. Instead, they argued that they should not be required to pay back the money because of "sovereign immunity."

During an extended exchange with Ali, a DOJ lawyer struggled to answer basic questions about the Trump administration's compliance with the temporary restraining order.

Chief Justice Roberts ordered a stay before the deadline as the court heard the case.

Foreign aid groups have been teetering on bankruptcy following Trump's decision to end aid and have been searching for answers.

During a Feb. 13 meeting with representatives from those organizations, Pete Marocco, the Trump administration official tasked with the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) defended what he called a "total zero-based review," and arguing that some areas of foreign aid required "radical change," according to audio from that meeting that was obtained by ABC News.

"As far as payment, one of the reasons that there have been problems with some of the payments is because, despite the president's executive order, despite the secretary's guidance, we still had nefarious actors in the agencies that were trying to push out hundreds of illegal payments," Marocco said. "And so we were able to seize control of that, stop them, take control of some of those people, and make sure that that money was not getting out the door."

Marocco suggested that payments for organizations with existing contracts would resume the following week, but they remained frozen.

ABC News' Will Steakin, Lucien Bruggeman and Shannon K. Kingston contributed to this report.