By Jonathan Stempel and Blake Brittain
NEW YORK, Jan 9 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Friday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's administration from freezing access by five Democratic-led states to
more than $10 billion of federal funds for childcare and family assistance based on what it said were concerns about fraud.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian in Manhattan, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, said he issued a temporary restraining order for the reasons stated in a legal filing by California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, which filed the lawsuit.
The White House did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the ruling.
The states sued the Trump administration late on Thursday, two days after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced the freeze.
Funds that were frozen include more than $7 billion from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provides cash to low-income families with children. The funds also included $2.4 billion from the Child Care and Development Fund, which helps make childcare more affordable, and about $870 million in social services grants for children.
HHS said it had concerns about "widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars" in the five states' welfare programs, including the possibility people other than U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents might be receiving benefits.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Friday said the Department of Agriculture had frozen federal benefit programs for Minnesota, citing fraud allegations.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat who was former Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate in the 2024 presidential election won by Trump, a Republican, announced on Monday he will not seek a third term so he can focus on the fraud scandal.
The five states said HHS lacked a legitimate justification for this week's funding freeze and had usurped Congress' power to allocate the money.
They also called the unsubstantiated fraud allegations a pretext to justify the lawsuit, whose real purpose was to "punish perceived political enemies of the Trump Administration by unlawfully withholding critical funding pending purported fraud detection measures unauthorized by any statute."
(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York; Editing by Chris Reese)
