Snohomish County will keep receiving federal housing and transportation dollars. A federal appeals court ruled Aug. 25, that the Trump administration cannot attach new political conditions to grants already authorized by Congress.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit voted 2-1 to uphold a preliminary injunction blocking the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Department of Transportation (DOT) from requiring local governments to drop diversity programs, cooperate with immigration enforcement, and disavow "gender ideology" as conditions of receiving federal funds.

Snohomish County was one of eight original plaintiffs that filed suit in May 2025. Three attorneys from the Snohomish County Office of the Prosecuting Attorney in Everett, Rebecca E. Wendling, Bridget E. Casey and Rebecca J. Guadamud, represented the county.

Sound Transit, the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority, was also a named plaintiff.

The ruling protects grants for 75 communities nationwide. King County, which led the lawsuit, said it has received or will receive $364 million in federal funds because of the injunction. The exact dollar amount at stake for Snohomish County alone was not disclosed in court filings.

The grants fund homeless services under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, including the Continuum of Care program that rehouses homeless individuals and families. DOT grants fund public transit, airport planning and rail infrastructure.

The stakes are acute locally. Snohomish County Public Works has already cut $110 million in road operations and capital improvements and left 74 staff positions unfilled. The county approved a new $20 vehicle license fee in August 2026 partly because federal grant matching funds were at risk.

What the court said

Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote the majority opinion, joined by Judge Richard Paez. Both are Clinton appointees.

"Only Congress, not the Executive, has the power to set conditions for the award of federal grants," said Paul J. Lawrence, the Pacifica Law Group attorney who argued the case for the local governments, in a statement to Courthouse News after the ruling.

McKeown wrote that the agencies offered no statutory basis for the conditions, The Seattle Times reported.

The majority found that losing grant funds "would be devastating and irreparable," citing potential harm to shelter-unstable families and forced reductions in transportation spending.

Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, a Trump appointee, dissented in part. He argued the court overstepped its bounds and intruded on policymaking, writing that "dislike for the President's policies is no substitute for following the law."

The court did not block all conditions. It sent the case back to the district court with instructions to narrow the injunction regarding anti-discrimination requirements, finding that conditioning grants on compliance with Title VI for programs that actually receive federal money is permissible.

What's next

The legal fight is not over. The case returns to U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, where Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein first issued the injunction on June 3, 2025. The Trump administration could also appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. No timeline for either step has been announced.

King County Executive Girmay Zahilay said in a statement that the ruling confirms the president cannot use federal funding as a political weapon to force local governments to adopt his policies. No public statement from Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers on the ruling has been released.