# Tucker Act The **Tucker Act** (1887, codified principally at **28 U.S.C. § 1491**) is the statute that lets people sue the United States for money. It waives federal [[Sovereign Immunity]] for claims "founded either upon the Constitution, or any Act of Congress or any regulation of an executive department, or upon any express or implied contract with the United States." It sends those claims to the court now called the [[Court of Federal Claims]]. The companion "Little Tucker Act" (28 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(2)) lets district courts hear the same kinds of claims up to $10,000. It is named for Rep. John Randolph Tucker of Virginia. It expanded the jurisdiction of the Court of Claims, which Congress had created in 1855 so that claims against the government would stop arriving as private bills. ## The decisive feature: money only The Act authorizes **money judgments**. It gives no general power to order the government to do or stop doing anything. That is the whole story of its modern importance. For decades the boundary with the [[Administrative Procedure Act]] ran through *Bowen v. Massachusetts* (1988), which held that a suit asking a district court to set aside an agency decision is not a suit for "money damages" just because money will follow. Under *Bowen*, a state or grantee whose federal funding was cut off could go to district court under the APA and get the funding decision vacated. ## 2025–26: the channeling fight The second Trump administration's mass grant terminations turned this boundary into the most important jurisdictional question of the term. - **[[Department of Education v. California]]** (April 4, 2025, 5–4, unsigned): the Court stayed an order restoring teacher-training grants. It said the suit was likely in substance a claim to enforce a contract to pay money, which belongs under the Tucker Act. Chief Justice Roberts would have denied the application, and Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson dissented. - **[[NIH v. American Public Health Association]]** (Aug 21, 2025): a split order. Five Justices sent challenges to individual research-grant terminations to the Court of Federal Claims. A different five, with Justice Barrett as the swing vote, left challenges to the NIH's underlying guidance in district court. Justice Gorsuch wrote separately to warn lower courts against resisting the Court's emergency orders. - Lower courts mostly followed, and district courts in several circuits dismissed grant suits on this reasoning. The clearest test is the $20 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. A divided D.C. Circuit panel sent those cancellations to the claims court in September 2025. The **en banc D.C. Circuit reversed on August 4, 2026**, 6–4. It held that the green banks were challenging interference with money already obligated to them under the [[Inflation Reduction Act]]'s mandatory appropriation, not suing on a contract, and it reinstated the injunction. The government moved on August 6 to stay the mandate pending a cert petition, so the channeling question is headed back to the Supreme Court. The practical effect is a remedy gap. A grantee can still win in the Court of Federal Claims, but it wins money later, not the program now. The court cannot order a grant reinstated, and damages for a terminated research program are uncertain. For an organization living on the grant, that is often the difference between surviving and closing. The terminations are not held lawful. They are routed to a court that cannot stop them. See [[How a Federal Agency Is Dismantled]]. ## See also - [[Court of Federal Claims]] · [[Sovereign Immunity]] · [[Administrative Procedure Act]] - [[Department of Education v. California]] · [[NIH v. American Public Health Association]] - [[Federal Grant Lifecycle]] · [[Termination for Convenience]] · [[Bid Protest]] · [[Impoundment Control Act]]