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Five nonprofit and community organizations whose grants were terminated by the U.S. Department of Justice have launched a class action in D.C. federal court challenging the department's "abrupt and unlawful" cancellation of $820 million in grant funding.

Wednesday's lawsuit said the DOJ's Office of Justice Programs offered a "boilerplate" explanation when it ended more than 370 multi-year agreements and grants last month — attributing the move to shifting agency priorities. The funding cuts pose "dangerous, dire, and possibly deadly consequences," the plaintiff organizations allege, because all of their work "focuses on some sort of community violence intervention."

The Vera Institute of Justice, Center for Children & Youth Justice, Stop AAPI Hate, FORCE Detroit and Health Resources in Action filed the suit. They are bringing the complaint on behalf of a proposed class that includes all entities whose OJP grants were terminated in April 2025.

"Absent a preliminary injunction, Plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm — multi-year projects will terminate abruptly, specialized staff will be laid off, critical services will be withdrawn from communities facing some of the gravest safety concerns — all compounded by lasting damage to hard-earned reputational trust," the suit said.

FORCE Detroit, for instance, said it supports "grassroots organizations and activists committed to alternatives to community safety that minimize criminalization." It was awarded a $2 million OJP grant for gun violence prevention and reduction work in a Detroit neighborhood, according to the complaint. The organization's executive director, Dujuan Zoe Kennedy, said community violence intervention work "has resulted in Detroit's lowest homicide rate since 1965."

"The President vows to support law enforcement, let it be clear that law enforcement supports this work. Eliminating federal grants adds incredible strain on our police departments, costs lives, and dismantles communities," Kennedy said in a statement Thursday.

The funding cutoff has sparked layoffs at FORCE and "immediate breakdowns in a care ecosystem it painstakingly built," the suit said.

"The termination of these grants has eliminated the resources needed to maintain a consistent presence in communities most impacted by violence and weakens the infrastructure it built to interrupt cycles of harm, with no viable replacement in sight," the suit said.

The other organizations also said they have had to lay off staff and end programming. The criminal justice nonprofit Vera lost more than $7 million in funding across five grants, and the other four plaintiff organizations were cut from a collective $15 million in funding, the complaint said. The suit said the terminations came without advance notice, and OJP offered a 30-day appeal window after issuing the termination.

The DOJ declined to comment Thursday.

The suit asserts the terminations are unconstitutionally vague, exceed OJP's authority and run afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act. The plaintiffs also say the cutoffs violate the Constitution's separation of powers, Congress' power over the federal purse and the president's due to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" — in this instance, congressional appropriations.

The suit is among a litany of others challenging the Trump administration's withholding of grant funding from various programs. The White House has responded in court by insisting that the suits belong in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which hears contract disputes, rather than a federal district court.

The plaintiffs in Wednesday's suit, however, countered in a motion for a preliminary injunction that their claims are not contract claims, nor are their grant agreements the kind that give rise to jurisdiction under the Tucker Act, a law that generally sends contract claims against the government to the claims court.

Besides, they argued, "Plaintiffs' claims would still not be subject to the Tucker Act because they are statutory and constitutional claims, not contract claims."

The plaintiffs are represented by Lisa Newman, Jennifer Fountain Connolly, Brian Netter, Cortney Robinson, Somil Trivedi and Skye L. Perryman of the Democracy Forward Foundation and Joshua Perry, Joshua Stanton and E. Danya Perry of Perry 麻豆传媒.

Counsel information for the defendants was not immediately available on Thursday.

The case is Vera Institute of Justice et al. v. U.S. Department of Justice et al., case number 1:25-cv-01643, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

--Editing by Vaqas Asghar.