Alito pauses Boy Scouts $2.46 billion abuse settlement

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito temporarily halted the Boy Scouts of America's $2.46 billion settlement Friday following decades of sexual abuse claims after a group of claimants appealed.

Alito issued the stay "pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court." The stay gives the court additional time to decide a February 9 request by the 144 abuse claimants seeking to block the settlement from moving forward.

The claimants are a small group of the 82,000 who filed claims for payment in the Boy Scouts of America's bankruptcy. They previously asked the Court to halt the organization's bankruptcy settlement, arguing that the settlement unlawfully prevents them from pursuing lawsuits against other organizations that are not bankrupt, including churches that ran scouting programs and local Boy Scout councils.

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Retired bankruptcy judge Barbara Houser, the trustee in charge of administering the Boy Scouts settlement, said the order will suspend all work on the settlement, including "evaluating claims and mailing checks to abuse survivors," according to Reuters. More than 3,000 men have already been paid nearly $8 million by the settlement trust.

"This is an administrative stay only and is not a decision on the merits of the plaintiffs’ application for a stay of the plan," the Boy Scouts of America told Fox News Digital in a statement.

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"As BSA’s brief in opposition to the stay application explained to the Court, the BSA plan has already been effective for ten months and will fully compensate all Scouting-abuse survivors. Staying that plan now would inflict severe harm on both the