A Baton Rouge federal judge has ordered the government to resume funding for one of Louisiana’s largest AmeriCorps programs, more than two months after a presidential directive dismantled the agency that helps nonprofits across the nation pay for community improvement projects.

U.S. District Judge John deGravelles sided with Serve Louisiana in his ruling Friday, ordering an injunction that terminated the drastic budget cuts that have halted volunteer efforts across the state.

“We are deeply grateful for the court’s ruling,” Lisa Moore, Serve Louisiana’s executive director, said in a statement Monday. “AmeriCorps isn’t just about improving lives in the communities we serve — it’s about fostering civic engagement in the AmeriCorps members themselves. We acted quickly to challenge this termination because we believe in modeling the very civic responsibility we’ve spent the past 30 years instilling in our members. These young people committed to 11 months of service, and now, thanks to this decision, we can uphold our end of that agreement.”

It’s not clear how wide reaching the recent ruling’s effects could be. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling earlier this year that bars federal district court rulings on DOGE cases from setting national precedent. While other states saw lawsuits in the wake of the cuts, Serve Louisiana was the only AmeriCorps vendor to file suit in Louisiana. 

Serve Louisiana is a Baton Rouge nonprofit that partners with 18 different public agencies and grassroots organizations statewide, such as the Boys & Girls Club and the East Baton Rouge Parish Library. The group supplies student members and senior volunteers to help with community development efforts such as mentoring children, coordinating environmental cleanup efforts and providing hurricane relief.

Serve Louisiana sued the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget, AmeriCorps and the recently created U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The volunteer group filed suit May 1 in the Baton Rouge-based federal district court, asking a judge to intervene and stop the cuts that abruptly stripped away grant dollars that Serve Louisiana relied upon for its work.

President Donald Trump gutted the AmeriCorps budget, slashing nearly $400 million away from the $557 million spending plan Congress had already earmarked for the federal volunteer agency.

The money had been appropriated for AmeriCorps to award grants to organizations that foster more than 1,000 state and local service programs nationwide. In Louisiana, DOGE cuts to AmeriCorps impacted 13 different nonprofit programs that for years have depended on the agency to pay its member workers a stipend that covers their living expenses for 11 months and helps them repay student loans. Members are typically recent college graduates embedded in nonprofit groups or faith-based organizations. Through the AmeriCorps programs, they work with schools, churches, food banks, homeless shelters, health clinics, youth centers and other initiatives.

Serve Louisiana challenged the Trump administration’s April order that suddenly revoked the grant dollars without notice midway through the fiscal year, saying “AmeriCorps had no valid reasoned basis for terminating Serve Louisiana’s grant, rendering the action arbitrary and capricious.”

The Office of Management and Budget, an executive branch agency of the federal government, issued the rescind order in an April 24 memo that called for the immediate cancellation of about $400 million in grants and appropriations AmeriCorps had already awarded. One day later, AmeriCorps officials sent Volunteer Louisiana, the state-sanctioned commission that processes and disburses the agency’s funding here, a termination notice that said the grant “no longer effectuates agency priorities.” With that, the feds cut all funding for the AmeriCorps programs across Louisiana. The same process played out in all 50 states and monthly disbarments for AmeriCorps grants were cut off nationwide.

Serve Louisiana billed itself as the largest grantee that partners with AmeriCorps in Louisiana. The group had been awarded about $700,000 in grant dollars for the current fiscal year, Moore said in an April 30 affidavit. The cuts meant Serve Louisiana could no longer pay monthly stipends to its 37 service members, who were completing 11-month assignments that saw them work full-time hours for 18 different nonprofit organizations. The members still had about three months left in their assignments but lost their health insurance and education awards as a result of the cuts

In arguing for the injunction, plaintiff attorneys said the most devastating impact was the threat to community projects and activities because Serve Louisiana would no longer be able to provide critical support staff.

The U.S. Attorneys Office called Serve Louisiana a “subgrantee” of the state commission that distributes the grants. They argued the lawsuit was really just a contract dispute between Serve Louisiana and federal agencies, one that should’ve been settled in federal claims court. deGravelles, an Obama appointee, rejected that notion.

“Plaintiff has not requested any damages—it has not asked for any monetary damages. It has not asked for reimbursement for the expenses that may have been incurred as a result of the termination of its AmeriCorps-funded employees, such as the costs of hiring new employees or overtime for existing employees,” the judge said in his ruling. “It has not asked for compensation for harms that may have occurred to ongoing projects as a result of a pause in activities. Instead, Plaintiff has requested specific relief and only specific relief: that the court enforce the statutory mandates under which AmeriCorps operates.”

deGravelles found that AmeriCorps reallocated funds based simply on new policy priorities, calling it “an act of agency discretion.” But he said Congress has “circumscribed agency discretion” with mandates. Even AmeriCorps’ own policy calls for notice and a public “comment rulemaking” hearing before any significant policy shifts. He determined Serve Louisiana is likely to succeed on the merit of it claims and ordered AmeriCorps to fund Serve Louisiana for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends Aug. 31.

“AmeriCorps may have the right to undertake different policy priorities, provided that it does so in accordance with all legal requirements such as notice and comment. However, if AmeriCorps chooses to terminate existing grants because they do not comply with new policy priorities, it is still required to follow both the standards set forth by the (Administrative Procedure Act) and those standards that AmeriCorps has set forth for itself.”