Federal Judge Orders White House Budget Office to Disclose Secret Spending Plans

A federal district court has ordered the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to publicly disclose detailed spending plans that have been quietly controlling how federal agencies can use their budgets, ruling that the agency violated transparency laws by keeping these documents hidden from the public.

In a decision issued January 28, 2026, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled in favor of two watchdog organizations, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Protect Democracy, finding that OMB must publish agency “spend plans” when those plans contain legally binding restrictions on how agencies spend taxpayer money.

To understand this ruling, it helps to know how the federal budget process works. When Congress passes spending bills, those appropriations go to federal agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Education. But before agencies can actually spend that money, the OMB, part of the Executive Office of the President, must approve how those funds are divided up through a process called “apportionment.”

“Spend plans” are detailed documents that agencies submit to OMB showing exactly how they intend to use their appropriated funds. These plans break down spending by category (salaries, grants, technical assistance, etc.) and provide granular details about specific programs and activities. They’re more detailed than the apportionment documents themselves.

OMB has been adding legally binding footnotes to apportionment documents stating that agencies can only spend their money “consistent with the latest agreed-upon spending plan” between the agency and OMB. In other words, OMB has been using these spend plans to exercise additional control over how agencies use funds that Congress already appropriated to them.

Under laws passed by Congress in 2022 and 2023, OMB is required to maintain a “Public Apportionments Database” that posts all apportionment documents, including “any associated footnotes,” within two business days of approval. This database is supposed to give the public transparency into how the executive branch is allocating federal funds.

In March 2025 OMB took the database offline entirely. After CREW and Protect Democracy sued, Judge Sullivan ruled in July 2025 that removing the database violated federal law and ordered it restored. OMB brought the database back online in August 2025.

But the watchdog groups discovered a new problem: while the database now included footnotes referencing spend plans, OMB refused to publish the actual spend plans themselves. This meant the public could see that agencies’ spending was restricted by these plans, but couldn’t see what those restrictions actually were.

Judge Sullivan’s latest ruling hinges on a legal concept called “incorporation by reference.” When one document specifically references another document and makes compliance with that second document legally mandatory, the second document effectively becomes part of the first.

The judge found that when OMB adds legally binding footnotes stating that funds “are available for obligation consistent with the latest agreed-upon spending plan,” OMB has incorporated those spend plans into the apportionment documents by reference. That makes the spend plans themselves “documents apportioning an appropriation” that must be disclosed under the 2022 and 2023 transparency laws.

According to CREW’s analysis, of the 22,361 apportionments approved between August 2021 and March 2025, less than a quarter of one percent incorporated spend plans by reference in this legally binding manner.

But between March 24, 2025, and September 5, 2025, after the current administration took office, 5.8% of apportionment documents incorporated undisclosed spend plans by reference. CREW identified at least 131 out of 2,245 apportionment documents during this period that included legally binding footnotes referencing secret spend plans.

OMB argued that spend plans are not themselves apportionment documents, but rather just inform OMB’s apportionment decisions. The agency also claimed there’s no meaningful difference between allowing agencies to spend money after submitting a spend plan versus requiring OMB approval of the spend plan’s contents.

Judge Sullivan rejected these arguments. He noted that when OMB conditions an agency’s ability to obligate funds on OMB’s approval of a spend plan’s contents, that’s fundamentally different from simply requiring agencies to submit information. The former makes the spend plan’s terms legally binding; the latter does not.

OMB also suggested the spend plans contain “sensitive and predecisional information” that shouldn’t be made public. But the agency never formally asserted any legal privilege, and Judge Sullivan had already ruled in his earlier decision that apportionment information cannot be withheld simply because it relates to internal deliberations: once OMB approves it, it becomes a final, legally binding decision that must be disclosed.

The court’s order requires OMB and its director, Russell Vought, to post in the Public Apportionments Database all spend plans whose terms are incorporated by reference in legally binding apportionment documents. This applies to all apportionments approved since March 24, 2025, and all future apportionments.