Maryland Sues Trump Administration For ‘Illegal' Action To Keep FBI Headquarters In D.C.

By William J. Ford, Maryland Matters

November 7, 2025

The state of Maryland and Prince George’s County sued the Trump administration Thursday over its plans to keep the FBI headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., a move that they said would “unlawfully sabotage a multiyear collaborative effort” to relocate the facility to Greenbelt.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Maryland, also claims that the administration plan would “unlawfully divert funding that Congress designated” for the Greenbelt project and put it toward renovation of the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington for the FBI.

Thursday’s announcement was just the latest battle in the fight by state and county officials to bring the FBI to Greenbelt, a proposal they say was developed over more than a decade of careful study and debate — only to be reversed in a matter of weeks on an apparent whim by the president.

“We are asking the court to stop the unlawful selection of the Reagan Building, prevent the diversion of congressionally appropriated funds and ensure the federal government, the Trump administration, follows the law,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said Thursday.

Brown said the reversal of the decision to locate the FBI at Greenbelt is “illegal” because Congress allocated more than $1 billion for Greenbelt, not the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington. It was not on any potential list of sites until July 1, when it was announced as the new home of the FBI.

U.S. Senate Committee advances plan to keep FBI headquarters in Washington

The lawsuit also says that state and county officials made “extensive preparations” for the Greenbelt site after it was chosen in September 2023 by the General Services Administration. But the GSA and FBI announced that they were “casting all that aside and were embarking on a new plan” without consulting congressional, state or local officials on the move, the lawsuit said.

“[In] Maryland, we played by the rules. We won the project fairly and we will not let this administration steal jobs and opportunities from Prince George’s County and Maryland,” Brown said.

Brown made the announcement at a news conference at the Wayne K. Curry Administration Building in Prince George’s County, surrounded by some of Maryland’s top Democratic officials – Gov. Wes Moore, Reps. Glenn Ivey (D-4th) and Steny Hoyer (D-5th), Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) and Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy.

“Maryland is going to fight this thing with everything that we have because in Maryland, we do not bend the knee,” Moore said. “So, if Donald Trump thinks that we are going to roll over when he tries to make life worse for our law enforcement, he better think twice, and we’ll see him in court.”

The lawsuit comes a week after a Republican majority on the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted 10-9, along party lines, for a resolution that brings the GSA one step closer to making the Reagan Building the new home for about 6,000 FBI employees.

The vote reverses the agency’s decision in 2023, during the Biden administration, to choose Greenbelt over other potential sites in Landover and Springfield, Virginia, to replace the aging FBI headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. That decision followed more than a decade of studies and competition between Maryland and Virginia over which state would land the project.

A GSA prospectus approved by the Senate committee last week, estimated that the cost for design, construction, management and inspection at the Reagan Building would be nearly $843.7 million. With an additional $555 million from the FBI that would include preconstruction and “fit-out requirements,” it would raise the amount to nearly $1.4 billion.

The federal agency states in the prospectus that a “30-year, present value cost analysis” of the total for refurbishing the Reagan Building would be $1.6 billion; construction for a new headquarters would cost $2.4 billion.

Ivey said the administration may want to save money “on some things,” but he also noted the estimated $300 million price tag to construct a White House ballroom and a proposal to give $40 billion in aid to Argentina.

“They spend it when they want to spend it, but apparently those are higher priorities then having our FBI agents and law enforcement personnel safe,” Ivey said during a brief interview after the news conference.

A GSA spokesperson said in an email Thursday the agency “does not comment on ongoing litigation.”

The lawsuit names the GSA, the FBI and the Justice Department as defendants, along with FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Maryland officials at Thursday’s event pointed out that Trump announced his intent to block the Greenbelt site earlier this year, when he said in a Justice Department speech that he didn’t want to relocate the FBI to Maryland “three hours away” from the current site on Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown D.C. The Hoover Building is actually about 16 miles from the Greenbelt site, which is just outside the Capital Beltway.

Hoyer, who was credited with getting the FBI project to Prince George’s, said the Trump administration’s decision to keep the headquarters in D.C. is “related more to his political bias.”

“He’s decided to move it to a building totally unsuited, unplanned for, undesigned for the purposes of a major law enforcement agency,” Hoyer said. “We’re going to win this suit.”