A federal judge ruled the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) terminating $600 million in environmental justice grants issued by the Biden administration for low-income areas was unlawful, Politico reported Wednesday.
The ruling over the Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program comes as the EPA is appealing another decision that its terminating $20 billion in Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants was also unlawful.
Congressional Republicans have proposed revoking funding for both grant programs as part of their reconciliation legislation.
The Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program, announced in December 2023, was part of a $2.8 billion tranche of funding under the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act meant for community organizations to provide block grants to seek solutions to pollution that takes a particularly heavy toll on communities of color and low-income and rural areas.
The EPA chose 11 groups to disburse the funds to subrecipients, a procedure that the Biden administration said would help the groups cut through red tape and access the money more efficiently, according to Politico.
The EPA in February, after Donald Trump became president, terminated the grants, seeking to halt environmental justice work as part of actions against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
Following this move, three of the regional grantmakers sued: the Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, which worked in the mid-Atlantic region; the Minneapolis Foundation, operating in the Midwest; and Philanthropy Northwest, which funded programs in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
Judge Adam Abelson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland ruled on Tuesday that the EPA's termination of these grants violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
Abelson, a Biden appointee, wrote that the "EPA contends that it has authority to thumb its nose at Congress and refuse to comply with its directives. That constitutes a clear example of an agency acting 'in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right,' and thereby violating the APA."
Abelson did not agree with the argument the EPA made in this and similar cases that the grant terminations are actually contract disputes that must be heard by a special court, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Instead, he determined that the EPA's terminations of the grants because the administration opposes environmental justice efforts were unlawful, writing in his ruling that "Congress expressly required EPA to use the appropriated funds for 'environmental justice' programs. By terminating plaintiffs' grants on the basis that current EPA leadership no longer wants to support 'environmental justice' programs, EPA exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Act, and therefore was ‘in excess of statutory... authority, or limitations.'"
Abelson also rejected the EPA's argument that the grants were terminated to prevent waste, insisting that the "EPA is required to spend the funds that Congress appropriated ... and to do so on specified types of projects, and to specifically ensure that such projects benefit disadvantaged communities."
The EPA said it is reviewing the decision.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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