April 30th, 2025
by Steve Crane, Maryland Matters
April 30, 2025
Maryland was one of the lead states in a coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia that sued the Trump administration Tuesday in an effort to block its push to “dismantle” AmeriCorps, the domestic volunteer service agency.
The suit said that within the past two weeks, agency officials, at the direction of Elon Musk’s DOGE Service, put 85% of the administrative staff on leave as well as all of the members of the National Civilian Conservation Corp, who were told their service would be terminated.
Last Thursday, the agency began sending reduction-in-force notices to all the administrative staffers who were on leave, the lawsuit said, and after hours on Friday it began notifying states that nearly $400 million in AmeriCorps programs operating in their states was being immediately terminated. That cut would affect more than 1,000 AmeriCorps programs nationwide, according to a statement Tuesday from Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown.
He said that in Maryland, Brown said, AmeriCorps had 4,949 members and provided more than $21 million last year in federal funding and education awards last year, supporting 4,949 members serving across the state. He said the Governor’s Commission on Service and Volunteerism funded 25 service programs through Americorps for everything from working with refugees or elderly residents to being in Teach for America.
“In Maryland alone, programs that educate children, care for the elderly, and rebuild homes are being wiped out overnight. I will fight this brazen abuse of power in court and do everything in my power to restore these life-changing services,” Brown said in a prepared statement on the filing of the lawsuit.
As Trump hits 100 days, Brown among attorneys general battling him at every turn
AmeriCorps has its roots in the Great Society programs of the 1960s and took its current form in 1993, as the Corporation for National and Community Service. It is a public-private partnership, in which volunteers typically spend a year of service, during which they are paid a stipend to cover basic living expenses and can receive scholarship funding at the end of their service.
Until the cuts began earlier this month, CNCS had a staff of 700 and supported more than 200,000 members, the lawsuit said.
The suit said the White House does not have the authority to eliminate the AmeriCorps program, which was authorized and funded by Congress and can only be undone by lawmakers. The sudden, DOGE-inspired cuts were unlawful, arbitrary and capricious, failed to provide sufficient public notice, and exceeded presidential powers to intrude on congressional authority, the suit said.
“The Administration is free to ask Congress to abolish AmeriCorps, but it cannot simply terminate the agency’s functions by fiat or defund the agency in defiance of administrative procedures, Congressional appropriations, and the Constitutional separation of powers,” the suit said. “Accordingly, the Defendants’ actions should be declared unlawful and vacated.”
Those charges were echoed in an April 23 letter to President Donald Trump, led by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and signed by 147 other members of Congress, including both of Maryland’s senators and four of its eigth House members: Democratic Reps. Johnny Olszewski Jr., Sarah Elfreth, Kweisi Mfume and Jamie Raskin.
The cuts to the program will “prevent the agency from continuing to deliver critical services, which include supporting veterans, fighting wildfires, tutoring in schools, combatting the fentanyl epidemic, and much more,” the letter said.
That was echoed by Gov. Wes Moore (D), who said in a statement Tuesday that the state “strongly supports the litigation to be filed by Attorney General Brown today to stand up for AmeriCorps.”
“If the federal administration wants to strengthen our country’s resolve, bridge divides, and usher in our next era of greatness, it should be expanding opportunities for Americans to serve one another,” Moore’s statement said.
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The lawsuit is just the most recent of dozens filed by Democratic attorneys general against the Trump administration’s lightning-fast and deep cuts to federal programs and funding, many of which have been successful at reversing or stalling those cuts. Brown has joined more than two dozen such suits, on education cuts, worker firings, transgender rights and more, and this is the second on which he has been one of the lead plaintiffs.
The suit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Maryland by Brown and the attorneys general of California, Colorado and Delaware. Also joining the suit were the attorneys general of Arizona, Connecticut, the District of Colombia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin, and the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org.
