Two courts block Trump bid to cancel $22B in climate grants

Two courts this week dealt blows to the Trump administration’s attempts to withdraw clean energy and climate grants. 

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency could not terminate $20 billion in clean energy grants awarded to nonprofit groups.

And a federal judge on Monday denied the Trump administration’s attempt to halt a court order to restore $1.6 billion in climate justice grants, saying the Environmental Protection Agency must reinstate the money.

A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Tuesday restored an injunction filed last year against EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s decision to take back billions of dollars in Biden-era grants toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The nonprofits still won’t have access to the funds right away, as the court is giving the EPA a week to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The other ruling stemmed from a lawsuit led by The Sustainability Institute, a nonprofit in South Carolina. It was brought by 11 total nonprofits as well as six cities — Baltimore; Columbus, Ohio; Madison, Wisconsin; Nashville, Tennessee; New Haven, Connecticut; and San Diego — that argued the Trump administration had unlawfully terminated their environmental and climate justice grants last year.

Environmental and climate justice refers to efforts to provide equitable access to healthy environments and focuses on helping communities disproportionately vulnerable to climate change and environmental pollutants.

Many of the grants awarded to cities, nonprofits and tribes were funded by Congress through  the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act. Under the law, Congress had provided nearly $3 billion to the EPA for the Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program, which the Trump administration later terminated.

U.S. District Judge Richard Mark Gergel wrote in his Monday ruling that the EPA did not demonstrate that it would sustain harm in giving back $1.6 billion in grants and reinstating the program — rather, stopping the grants would injure the plaintiffs. He ruled it was unlawful for the EPA to clawback the funds.

Gergel had ruled in June that EPA illegally terminated the Environmental and Climate Justice Program. And two weeks ago, after the agency didn’t release the money, he again ordered the EPA to restore the program and reinstate grants through the end of next month, before the funds expire.

On Friday, EPA Associate Deputy Administrator Travis Voyles filed the agency’s motion to halt the court order while the agency appeals the case to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He argued the EPA doesn’t have the staffing or money to reinstate the grants and had eliminated environmental justice offices agency-wide, asking the judge to cancel the deadline of Sept. 30.

Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.