Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, PUBLIC EMPLOYEES—S.D.N.Y.: Federal judge blocks attempted dismantling of U.S. Agency for Global Media, (Mar 31, 2025)

By George Basharis, J.D.

The decisive ruling granted a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter Voice of America and other international broadcasting services.

A federal judge in New York has temporarily halted what plaintiffs described as a sweeping attempt to dismantle the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the government agency that oversees Voice of America and other international broadcasting networks that reach hundreds of millions of listeners worldwide. The district court granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) on March 28, 2025, blocking the agency’s leadership from further reducing its workforce or terminating grants to its affiliate organizations following actions taken in mid-March that had effectively shut down most of USAGM’s operations (Widakuswara v. Lake, No. 25-CV-2390 (JPO) (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 28, 2025)).

USAGM is an independent executive agency created and funded by Congress that oversees Voice of America (VOA), the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Middle East Broadcasting Network (MBN), and the Open Technology Fund (OTF). Prior to the events leading to the lawsuit, USAGM’s grantees had more than 425 million listeners every week around the world. The lawsuit was filed by a group of government employees, individual journalists, unions, and nonprofits advocating for independent journalism against USAGM, its Acting CEO Victor Morales, and Senior Advisor Kari Lake.

Background. On March 14, 2025, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14238, entitled “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.” The order demanded that “the non-statutory components and functions of [USAGM] shall be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The following day, the White House published an article titled “The Voice of Radical America,” which stated: "President Donald J. Trump’s executive order [14238] on Friday will ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”

Agency’s rapid dismantling. Beginning on March 15, 2025, USAGM’s leadership undertook a series of swift actions that plaintiffs claimed violated their rights and exceeded legal authority. According to the lawsuit, the agency placed 1,042 employees on administrative leave with full pay and benefits. The plaintiffs showed that 75 percent of Radio Free Asia employees were furloughed.

On the same day, USAGM posted an update on its website describing the agency as “not salvageable” and “from top-to-bottom this agency is a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer—a national security risk for this nation—and irretrievably broken.”

The dismantling continued March 16, 2025, when “USAGM terminated contracts with all [approximately 598] personal services contractors,” whose pay would end on March 31, 2025. Lake also terminated the grant agreements for RFE/RL, RFA, and the OCB. The following day, USAGM’s Director for Stations and Operations instructed "all USAGM Foreign Service employees” to shut down all transmitters, place locally employed staff on leave, and expect to be placed on administrative leave themselves within two days.

Additionally, during the court proceedings, USAGM’s HR Director notified union officials that all non-retiring radio broadcast technicians and approximately 594 “broadcast journalists, technicians, budget analysts, electronics engineers, and others” would receive termination notices within weeks.

Agency actions “arbitrary and capricious,” likely violating federal law. The court determined that the plaintiffs had sufficiently demonstrated all four requirements necessary for a temporary restraining order: likelihood of success on the merits, irreparable harm, balance of equities in their favor, and public interest.

The court found that the agency’s actions constituted final agency action that could be reviewed under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and that USAGM leadership had likely violated the APA by acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner. The court noted that defendants had failed to provide reasoned analysis for their sweeping changes, offering only a single sentence of explanation in their opposition to the TRO motion.

“Defendants failed to provide adequate reasoning behind the sweeping changes to USAGM and seemingly failed to consider any reliance issues in effectively closing the agency,” the court stated. The court emphasized that the single line of explanation provided by the defendants was “grossly insufficient and falls far short of reasoned analysis.”

The court also found that defendants likely violated the Take Care Clause of the Constitution and separation of powers principles by effectively shuttering a congressionally created agency funded through specific line-item appropriations. “Withholding congressionally appropriated funds, and effectively shuttering a congressionally created agency simply cannot be construed as following through on this constitutional mandate,” the court said.

Furthermore, the court determined that defendants had failed to carry out the clear statutory mandates of the agency’s governing statute, which requires USAGM to broadcast “information about developments in each significant region of the world” and for VOA broadcasts to “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.”

Irreparable harm. The court found that plaintiffs adequately demonstrated they would suffer irreparable harm without temporary relief. The court was particularly concerned about two John Doe plaintiffs who are foreign nationals working in the United States on J-1 visas and would face deportation to countries where they might face persecution.

John Doe 3 would be “obligated to return to [his] home country…and reside there for two years” in a country “governed by an authoritarian regime that has labeled VOA a subversive organization,” where he would risk “imprisonment for over 10 years on charges of spreading ‘false information’” for his reporting.

The court also noted that amici had stated that “at least nine journalists and media workers who worked for or contributed to VOA or its regional outlets have been killed in connection with their work since 2003,” while “[n]ine others have been imprisoned.”

The court rejected the defendants’ argument that the visa revocations merely forced the journalists to leave the country earlier than scheduled, noting that the compressed timeframe gave them neither the opportunity to find alternative visa options nor adequate time to plan for the significant risks they would face upon return to their home countries.

Court’s order. In granting the TRO, the court temporarily enjoined the defendants “from taking any further actions to implement or effectuate the March 14, 2025 Executive Order entitled ‘Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy’ as to USAGM and the March 15, 2025 email issued to all VOA staff, or take any action to reduce USAGM's workforce.”

Specifically, the order prevents USAGM leadership from proceeding with any further attempts to terminate, reduce-in-force, place on leave, or furlough any USAGM employee or contractor; terminating any USAGM grant or contract; or closing any USAGM office or requiring employees or contractors in overseas offices to return to the United States.

Notably, the court denied defendants’ request for a $23.1 million bond, which they had argued was proper under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c) to cover “approximately $1.1 million per day to maintain the status quo” for the TRO period. The court agreed with plaintiffs that “requiring that plaintiffs suing the government to vindicate constitutional and statutory rights post bonds of over $1 million a day would ensure that very few individuals could afford to sue the federal government.”

The temporary restraining order will remain in effect pending a hearing and determination on the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, which would extend the protections while the full case proceeds.

The case is No. 25-CV-2390 (JPO).

Attorneys: Daniel Eisenberg (Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel) for Patsy Widakuswara. Danielle Marryshow, U.S. Department of Justice, for Kari Lake.

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