Four nonprofit fair housing organizations are suing the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) over the cancellation of approximately $30 million in grant funding.
The New York Times reported the lawsuit, which was filed in Massachusetts district court, accused HUD and DOGE of making an “egregious overstep” by terminating Fair Housing Initiatives Program grants that are distributed to state- and city-level nonprofits to enforce the federal Fair Housing Act. These nonprofits mostly have annual budgets of less than $1 million and rely heavily on the grants to operate.
The organizations filing the lawsuit are the San Antonio Fair Housing Council – which said it was forced to lay off more than half of its workforce – plus the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center and Idaho’s Intermountain Fair Housing Council, which both claimed to cut back on its services since the grant funding stopped.
Lila Miller, a lawyer at Relman Colfax, the firm representing the nonprofits, argued the funds termination was illegal because the grants were allotted by Congress and DOGE had no authority to coordinate HUD’s policies.
“Congress makes the law, and Congress sets the bounds of agency action,” she said.
