Bellingham joins suit challenging Trump’s withholding of allocated federal funds
Bellingham has joined several U.S. cities and counties in a lawsuit challenging Trump administration demands that they change public policies on immigration, diversity, gender identity and reproductive rights in order to receive federal funds that have been approved by Congress.
In remarks during the City Council meeting Monday night, Mayor Kim Lund announced the city has signed on to King County v. Turner in federal district court, a suit that now has more than 60 plaintiffs and has nationwide implications. Plaintiffs are suing Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner, claiming the federal government is overstepping its authority in using allocated funding as leverage to force local government policy.
Bellingham is receiving about $50 million each year from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Health and Human Services. The funds go to local agencies that provide food, health care and housing for homeless and low-income residents. Other funds pay for roads, bridges and other infrastructure, Deputy City Administrator Forrest Longman told The Bellingham Herald.
“It’s unacceptable and possibly unlawful to use housing and transportation funding as leverage to force the city of Bellingham to adopt unrelated federal policies,” Lund said. “We are standing up to protect vital services against what we believe to be executive overreach and what courts will decide to be unlawful attacks against cities like ours.”
Lund said Trump’s demands are an abuse of executive power and violate the U.S. Constitution and other federal laws.
“These newly-added grant conditions put the city in an impossible position: Either accept policies that would harm our community and go against our core values or lose access to critical federal funding that supports essential community services,” Lund said.
City Council member Michael Lilliquist compared the Trump administration’s demands to a dystopian novel.
“Federal agencies have forced a legal confrontation on us based on a contorted, upside-down interpretation of anti-discrimination laws,” Lilliquist told The Herald. “They are arguing that federal anti-discrimination laws forbid programs designed to prevent discrimination and exclusion. It’s an Orwellian situation, in which the federal government is trying to say the truth is false, and the false is true.”
“The people who will be hurt the most are children, seniors and ordinary families who rely on programs that are widely supported and have been in place for decades. We need to fight to keep federal funding for those programs,” Lilliquist said in an email.
Lund said the actions Trump is demanding “are counter to our community’s values — values stated and affirmed in resolutions council adopted in 2017 and again just last month.”
This story was originally published July 22, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
