The FBI's 15-year attempt to find a new headquarters just hit another major roadblock.

A federal judge on Monday blocked the nation's top law enforcement agency's plan to relocate its headquarters to the Ronald Reagan Building, ruling that it was arbitrary and capricious.

U.S. District Court of Maryland Judge Theodore Chuang issued an order declaring the FBI's selection of the Reagan Building unlawful and void because it violated laws passed by Congress directing the agency to build a new headquarters in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Chuang wrote that Congress specifically allocated funding to the General Services Administration to build the new headquarters, and the FBI had violated its statutory authority by redirecting $555M in appropriations to retrofitting the former headquarters of the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

The lawsuit was brought in November by Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown and Prince George's County as co-plaintiffs against the GSA, the Department of Justice, FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Todd Blanche, Assistant Attorney General Jolene Ann Lauria and GSA Administrator Edward Forst. 

“Maryland and Prince George’s County committed more than a decade of work to earn the FBI headquarters and pledged hundreds of millions of dollars,” Brown said in a statement. “By blocking the Trump Administration’s unlawful attempt to move the FBI to the Reagan Building and divert the funds Congress set aside for this project, the Court has cleared the path back to Greenbelt.”

The Trump administration is likely to appeal. A GSA spokesperson called Chuang “an activist judge” who is “wasting taxpayer dollars in yet another political decision.”

“GSA will not pursue an inferior approach in cost, speed, and value,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Guided by President Trump’s vision, we remain focused on delivering a new FBI Headquarters faster and at far lower cost to the American taxpayer.”

Patel announced in July 2025 that the agency would move its headquarters from the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Downtown D.C. to the Reagan Building a few blocks away. 

The Hoover Building is notoriously decrepit, and the agency has been looking to move out since 2011, when Congress approved the GSA to search for a modern, consolidated facility. But the saga of finding a replacement has taken many twists and turns since then. 

Three finalist sites — Greenbelt and Landover, Maryland, and Springfield, Virginia — were established during the Obama administration, only for President Donald Trump to halt the process in his first term. The GSA in 2023 picked the sprawling surface parking lot next to the Greenbelt Metro station to construct a new suburban headquarters costing $3B or more. In March 2025, Trump said his administration was “not going to let that happen.”

The FBI and GSA's leadership have argued against moving hundreds of agents and employees to a campus 15 miles from the White House and Department of Justice, both for operational reasons and because Congress has appropriated less than a third of its final budget. 

“Moving to the Ronald Reagan Building is the most cost effective and resource efficient way to carry out our mission to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution,” Patel said in announcing the move last summer.

DOJ attorneys had argued that Congress greenlit the move in passing a budget in February that acknowledged the plan to reprogram $555M in spending toward the Reagan Building. But the budget law blocked the FBI from spending that money until it submits architectural and engineering plans for review, which it never did, Chuang wrote.

Representatives for the DOJ didn't respond to requests for comment.

The ruling is “a process issue at its core,” Cushman & Wakefield Executive Vice Chairman Darian LeBlanc, who specializes in government leasing, said in an email. Because Congress mandated the FBI to follow its competitive sourcing process, the GSA must justify and document why it would change course and get lawmakers' approval.

“[In my opinion] — it is part of a larger failing of the administration,” LeBlanc wrote.

The FBI's attempt to move to the Reagan Building echoes other relocations by agencies since Trump returned to office. 

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is being moved from the brutalist Robert C. Weaver Federal Building in Southwest D.C. to Alexandria, Virginia, displacing the National Science Foundation. The District of Columbia filed a lawsuit seeking to block that move last month.

The GSA announced in March that the Department of Energy would move out of its longtime home at the James W. Forrestal Complex and into the Department of Education's headquarters as that agency moves to other space vacated by the shuttering of USAID.