Maryland Matters Staff
Maryland Matters

A second federal district judge in Maryland has ordered the Trump administration to reinstate AmeriCorps workers who were laid off without notice in April and to restore $400 million in funding and grants to nonprofit organizations.

The preliminary injunction handed down July 7 by District Judge Matthew Maddox comes a month and two days after a similar ruling in a separate AmeriCorps case in Maryland by U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman — whose ruling is quoted heavily by Maddox.

Both judges blocked moves by the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to shut down AmeriCorps programs, including the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC), Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and various state and private grant programs.

Boardman ruled in favor of 24 states and the District of Columbia that sued to block the DOGE cuts. Maddox ruled in favor of a number of nonprofits from around the country, members of an AmeriCorps labor union and three AmeriCorps service members.

Both cases were a response to DOGE moves in mid-April to immediately terminate all NCCC projects, along with 2,000 NCCC participants, and to put more than 600 AmeriCorps staffers — about 85 percent of the agency’s staff — on administrative leave, to be laid off less than two weeks later. Workers were ordered to immediately stop working and were locked out of AmeriCorps offices, email and other systems.

Maddox said the workers and nonprofits that sued the Corporation for National and Community Service, which runs AmeriCorps, were likely to win on their claims that the abrupt government cuts were made without authority, failed to follow appropriate procedures and were likely to cause irreparable harm to the plaintiffs.

Maddox wrote that the government “cancelled approximately $400 million in AmeriCorps grants and terminated funding to both direct grantees and subgrantees of State Service Commission…. These actions have led to significant disruptions in the delivery of services that were previously funded by AmeriCorps and provided by the Nonprofit Plaintiffs.”

“This disruption has included the termination or suspension of assistance with college applications, provision of teachers to Indigenous school districts, housing assistance for low-income families, childhood literacy programs, summer and afterschool learning programs, and neighborhood revitalization programs, among other services,” he wrote.

Maddox ordered the return of roughly $400 million in funding to 14 nonprofits that had grants to do AmeriCorps work, the reinstatement of hundreds of AmeriCorps Employees Union Local 2027 members who were put on administrative leave on April 15 and subsequently laid off, and the return of three AmeriCorps members who lost their positions as a result of the cuts.

Boardman had ordered much of the same in her June 5 order.

Besides Maryland and Washington, D.C., other states that sued, and are subject to Boardman’s preliminary injunction, are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Maddox’s order affects three unnamed AmeriCorps members as well as about 400 members of AmeriCorps Employees Union, AFSCME Local 2027. It also applies to 14 nonprofits: Elev8 in Baltimore; Red Cloud Indian School in South Dakota; Bur Oak Land Trust in Iowa; Partners for Campus-Community Engagement in Pennsylvania; National College Attainment Network in Washington, D.C.; Michigan College Access Network; North Carolina Housing Coalition; Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey; Handson Suburban Chicago; Democracy Maine; the Service Collaborative of WNY in New York; Rainbow Labs in California; the SEED Coalition in Minnesota; and the Aspire Afterschool Learning in Virginia.

Maddox gave the government 24 hours to file a status report confirming that all parties had been notified of his order and that the government was complying with it. It is to file an updated status report every two weeks.

This story was originally published on Maryland Matters on July 8, 2025.