EPA is urging a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit seeking renewed access to some $3 billion in environmental and climate justice grants, partly on the grounds that Congress has since taken back the money in a recently approved tax and spending package.
With the signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act earlier this month, the Biden-era grant program has “effectively been abolished” and the suit is now moot, lawyers for the agency wrote in a motion filed Monday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Even if that were not the case, they wrote, the Trump administration still had the discretion to cut off funding and — because the grants are fundamentally contract agreements — any legal challenges should be brought with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
The filing marks EPA’s first attempt to parry the suit brought last month by almost two dozen nonprofits, local governments and other recipients of the grant program, approved by Congress in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
