Federal Judge Suggests He’d Halt Dismantling of VOA

The judge said he’ll likely order the reinstatement of the outlet’s employees to full-time work.

The Voice of America building in Washington on June 15, 2020. Andrew Harnik/AP Photo

A federal judge said at a March 28 hearing in New York he will probably block the Trump administration’s shutdown of Voice of America and order that the international broadcaster’s staffers and contractors be allowed to return to work.

Some 1,300 of the government-funded outlet’s journalists and other employees were placed on administrative leave with full pay on March 15 after President Donald Trump moved to defund its parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”

The move came as part of the administration’s efforts to downsize the federal bureaucracy. District Judge J. Paul Oetken said it “just feels like the approach was, ‘we’ll take a sledgehammer to the agency and the courts will work it out.’”

He added that he felt the situation was “a classic case of arbitrary and capricious decision-making.”

Oetken indicated that he would likely issue a temporary order later that day directing the plaintiff VOA staffers’ reinstatement to full-time work and halting any further reductions in force for the time being.

Attorneys for the employees noted that some of their clients, like those who work for VOA’s sister network Radio Free Asia, were foreign citizens who had been granted work visas. Those workers, the lawyers said, would be forced to return to their home countries, where they could face persecution.

The Trump administration has been highly critical of VOA, deeming its news coverage as liberally biased and “radical propaganda,” according to a White House statement.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Andrew Celli accused the administration of wanting the outlet to broadcast its “MAGA message,” referring to Trump’s campaign slogan “make America great again.” He argued that VOA’s “Orwellian” shuttering violated both its journalist employees’ First Amendment right to free speech and the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies operate.

The judge was more amenable to the latter argument, finding it more straightforward than Celli’s free speech claims.

The existence of both the U.S. Agency for Global Media and VOA was codified by Congress, so eliminating either violates federal law, the plaintiffs’ attorneys argued in their complaint.

Kari Lake, who heads the U.S. Agency for Global Media, said in a March 15 statement that her agency will “continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview” while shedding “everything that is not statutorily required.”

In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tomoko Onozawa argued that the case should be transferred to the District of Columbia, where VOA is based, and that no emergency relief was warranted.

The judge did not address the transfer request.

Reuters contributed to this report.