U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled this week that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot terminate parts of the billions of dollars in climate grants awarded under the previous White House administration.
According to Chutkan’s order, the EPA cannot “deny, obstruct, delay, or otherwise limit access to funds in accounts established in connection with Plaintiffs’ grants, including funds in accounts established by Plaintiffs’ subgrantees.”
Climate United Fund CEO Beth Bafford celebrated the ruling, saying the order “gives us a chance to breathe after the EPA unlawfully — and without due process — terminated our awards and blocked access to funds that were appropriated by Congress and legally obligated.”
“After a year-long application process, we were hired to do a job that we’ve done for decades: investing in communities and strengthening markets. We want to get back to work,” Bafford said.
Chutkan issued a temporary restraining order against the EPA’s grant terminations in March. “Based on the record before the court, and under the relevant statutes and various agreements, it does not appear that EPA Defendants took the legally required steps necessary to terminate these grants, such that its actions were arbitrary and capricious,” Chutkan wrote at the time.
“The Biden EPA handled politically connected and inexperienced nongovernmental organizations tens of billions in taxpayer funding in a manner that deliberately reduced the ability of EPA to conduct proper oversight,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said following the March order. “I will not rest until these hard-earned taxpayer dollars are returned to the U.S. Treasury. Every penny EPA spends will go towards our core mission of protecting human health and the environment, and Powering the Great American Comeback.”
Update:
The D.C. Court of Appeals issued a hold on Chutkan’s ruling, writing, “The purpose of this order is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the district court’s forthcoming opinion in support of its order granting a preliminary injunction together with the emergency motion for stay pending appeal and any response thereto, and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion.”
