Nonprofit groups fighting to receive roughly $17 billion in Biden-era climate grants have agreed to keep the money on ice a while longer — a move that could delay the awards until summer 2027 if the Supreme Court agrees to settle the dispute.
In a Tuesday order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the recipients fighting Administrator Lee Zeldin’s termination of their grants must be allowed to tap the funds again starting next week.
But in a filing Thursday evening, EPA said it reached a deal with challengers to maintain the funding freeze while the case is appealed to the Supreme Court. The D.C. Circuit backed the arrangement Friday afternoon.
Now, the case will go through the traditional appeals process to the nation’s highest court. That will avoid an appeal on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, also known by some critics as the “shadow” docket, that might not have gone favorably for the grantees.
