From the Associated Press via CNN, September 2:
The Trump administration was handed a win by a federal appeals court on Tuesday in its effort to freeze billions of dollars and terminate contracts for nonprofits to run a “green bank” aimed at financing climate-friendly projects.
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency had blasted the Biden-era program as a waste of taxpayer money, tried to claw back funding that had already been distributed and accused the nonprofits of mismanagement.
A lower court said the EPA couldn’t support Administrator Lee Zeldin’s accusations and that the agency was wrong to try and end contracts with the nonprofits without substantiating allegations against them. On Tuesday, a divided federal appeals court ruled 2-1 in the agency’s favor, saying the EPA should not have been blocked from terminating the grants and that the arguments by the climate groups have no place in federal district court.
Instead, the case should be heard in a federal claims court that hears contract disputes, the appeals court ruled in a decision written by US Appeals Court Judge Neomi Rao, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term. The decision was a major loss for the groups who said they can only seek monetary damages in district court. The groups in this case were seeking an order allowing them immediate access to their funds, which total about $16 billion.
“In sum, district courts have no jurisdiction to hear claims that the federal government terminated a grant agreement arbitrarily or with impunity. Claims of arbitrary grant termination are essentially contractual,” Rao wrote in a decision supported by Judge Gregory Katsas, also a Trump appointee.
The appeals court ruling said the nonprofits’ arguments belong in federal claims court because they dealt chiefly with the underlying contracts the groups held with the federal government, not matters of law or the Constitution.
Climate United Fund and other groups sued the EPA, Zeldin and Citibank, which held the grant money on behalf of the agency, saying they had illegally denied the groups access to funds awarded last year. They wanted access to those funds again, saying the freeze had paralyzed their work and jeopardized their basic operations....
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As we said back in April 2023:
"EPA’s FY2024 Budget Request Emphasizes Continued Focus on Climate, Environmental Justice, and Infrastructure"
One of the hottest areas of funding this year and beyond will be for a Just Energy Transition.
We'll have more as the money tide comes rolling in but for now some background....
From April 2024's "The EPA's National Clean Investment Fund Is Handing Out Substantial (multi-billion dollar) Grants":
.....Climate United Fund
- Award Amount: $6,970,000,000
- Coalition Members/Named Subrecipients: CPC Green Housing Decarbonization Fund LLC; Self-Help Climate Capital LLC
- Description: Climate United Fund (CUF) is a wholly controlled subsidiary of Calvert Impact, Inc., a national nonprofit investment firm that has joined together with Community Preservation Corporation and Self-Help Ventures Fund, two U.S. Treasury-certified Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). These three national nonprofits have successfully raised, invested, and managed nearly $30 billion of private and institutional capital with a focus on economic opportunity and environmental sustainability in low-income and disadvantaged communities.....
Followed in February 2025 by:
EPA Moves To Claw Back $20 Billion In Environmental Justice And Other Grants
The outro from February 10's "Bezos Earth Fund Removes "Environmental Justice" As A Focal Point" was "More on Federal government environmental justice grants tomorrow, it's a lot of money."
I had planned to post a couple announcements from the Biden-Harris administration including this from April 2024: "Biden-Harris Administration Announces $20 Billion in Grants to Mobilize Private Capital and Deliver Clean Energy and Climate Solutions to Communities Across America" and this from December 2023: "Biden-Harris Administration Announces $600M to 11 Grantmakers to Fund Thousands of Environmental Justice Projects Across the Nation as Part of Investing in America Agenda"
And then we heard there might be more on this story coming out almost immediately, so we held off.
First up, from the Washington Post, originally headlined "Trump EPA chief accuses Biden of ‘tossing gold bars off the Titanic’" which was actually a quote from an EPA honcho rather than the new EPA Admistrator, Lee Zeldin. The headline has since been changed to "EPA chief says Biden was ‘irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash,’ vows to get back $20 billion"....
And March 2025 - "Judge bars Trump’s EPA from taking back $20B in climate grants — for now"
