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Pending court approval, case will be fully and permanently resolved in Maryland’s favor
BALTIMORE, MD – Attorney General Anthony G. Brown today announced that the U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss its appeal of the final judgment that permanently blocks the Trump administration’s effort to unlawfully impose immigration enforcement requirements on U.S. Department of Transportation grants and other funding that amount to more than $1 billion a year for Maryland. By dropping its appeal, the Trump administration submits to the lower court ruling, fully resolving the case in favor of Maryland and the 21 other states that sued the administration.
“The Trump administration’s unlawful actions threatened funding that keeps Marylanders safe and our State moving,” said Attorney General Brown. “Our lawsuit protected the federal resources that maintain our roads and bridges, support public transit, reduce deadly crashes, and ensure people can get to work, school, and their homes safely. Those investments are essential to Maryland’s economy, public safety, and daily life.
Maryland receives more than $1 billion a year in funding from the Department of Transportation to build and maintain vital travel infrastructure like the roads, highways, airways, and bridges that connect communities and carry their residents to their workplaces and homes. This includes the funding necessary to prevent fatal traffic accidents and stop drunk drivers; the funding to provide transit for seniors and those with disabilities; and the funding that protects and restores roads after environmental disasters like fires or flooding. Neither the purpose of these funding programs, nor the criteria that govern them, are in any way connected to immigration enforcement.
The Constitution is clear: Congress, not the President, decides how federal money is spent. And for decades, Congress has passed laws guaranteeing funding to states like Maryland to improve their roads and protect those who use them — funds that the federal government generally has by virtue of the taxes it receives from the people of Maryland and other states. Yet despite the constraints imposed by Congress and the Constitution, the Trump administration attempted to seize Congress’s power of the purse by imposing unlawful conditions on transportation funding. In doing so, the Trump administration violated two key principles that underlie the American system: agencies in the Executive Branch cannot act outside the authority conferred on them by Congress, and the federal government is subject to strict limits when it seeks to use the spending power to influence states to adopt its preferred policies.
On November 4, 2025, the district court issued final judgment in favor of Maryland and the states that challenged this unlawful conduct, issuing an order permanently enjoining the Trump administration from unlawfully imposing the conditions and vacating the conditions across all U.S. Department of Transportation funding programs. In issuing its decision, the Court found that the Trump administration has “blatantly overstepped their statutory authority, violated the APA, and transgressed well-settled constitutional limitations on federal funding conditions. The Constitutions demands the Court set aside this lawless behavior.”
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