On June 29, 2026, a federal court blocked the Trump administration from enforcing unlawful grant conditions against the City of Cleveland and eight other cities and counties — protecting funding for programs that keep babies alive, house families, and guard against public health threats. L4GG serves as co-counsel for Cleveland in the case, City of Seattle v. Trump, through our Pro Bono Litigation Corps (PBLC).
What was at stake for Cleveland
Cleveland has authority to accept roughly $260 million in federal funds this year for services its residents depend on. Over the past year, federal agencies began attaching new conditions to grant awards across the Departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security: certifications that recipients operate no DEI programs the administration deems illegal, prohibitions on “promoting ‘gender ideology,’” agreement that compliance with all federal anti-discrimination laws is “material” for False Claims Act purposes, and immigration-enforcement conditions — vague, coercive terms untethered from the programs Congress actually created.
The human stakes are hard to overstate. MomsFirst, Cleveland’s federally funded Healthy Start program, has worked since 1991 to reduce infant mortality in a city where Black babies die at nearly three times the rate of white babies. Babies born to MomsFirst participants die at less than half the rate of non-participants — 5.1 deaths per 1,000 live births versus 12.6 — and the program’s federal Healthy Start grant makes up about half its budget. The challenged conditions also reached the HOME funds that supply roughly 80% of Cleveland’s affordable-housing development budget (300–500 new units a year), community development grants that fund after-school programs, senior services, and home repairs, housing assistance for people living with HIV/AIDS, homelessness services, airport and street-safety projects, and BioWatch, the city’s early-warning system for airborne biological threats.
A coalition win
Seattle filed suit in July 2025 and won a preliminary injunction protecting its own funding last October. In April 2026, Cleveland joined the case alongside Columbus, Durham, Portland, and Allegheny, Hennepin, Prince George’s, and Ramsey Counties, and the coalition moved to block enforcement of the conditions. L4GG’s PBLC team laid the groundwork for Cleveland — building the evidentiary record that documented, grant by grant, the funding and programs these conditions put at risk.
Judge Barbara J. Rothstein of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington granted the motion, holding that the coalition was likely to succeed in their claim that the agencies’ actions were contrary to law because “general grant administration authority and existing civil rights statutes do not authorize agencies to impose new, cross-cutting conditions untethered from the purposes Congress specified for the relevant grant programs.” The injunction protects all nine communities’ funding while the case proceeds. As Cleveland Law Director Mark Griffin put it: “The city is not going to step back from its commitment to human rights.”
One year of the Pro Bono Litigation Corps
This win arrives as the PBLC marks its first anniversary. Launched on July 21, 2025, the Corps mobilizes experienced attorneys and gives them the infrastructure to take on high-impact litigation for communities under threat. Cleveland’s story shows what that looks like in practice: when the federal government tried to hold a city’s lifelines hostage, lawyers stood in the gap.
The injunction is preliminary, and the case continues. If you’re an attorney who wants to be part of what comes next, volunteer with the PBLC. If you want to power this work, support the Corps.