Dive Brief:
- A coalition of 13 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California challenging the The termination of the Trump administration of financing the energy and infrastructure programs created through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Employment Act.
- In addition to cutting nearly $8 billion from clean energy projectsthat the Energy Department announced in October, the Trump administration has “quietly abandoned” projects funded by “high-profile energy and infrastructure legislation passed during the previous presidential administration,” the suit claims.
- “The president is collecting this funding at the expense of hardworking Americans and stifling innovation and the economy for the sake of partisan payback,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.. The DOE has canceled more than $1.2 billion in funding for clean energy projects in California.
Diving knowledge:
US Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought posted this on social media in early October “almost $8 billion in funding Green New Scam to fuel the left’s climate agenda is being canceled” and named 16 states that would be affected: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.
The DOE said it had determined the grants “it did not adequately advance the energy needs of the nation, they were not economically viableand would not provide a positive return on the investment of taxpayer dollars.”
The states allege the funding cuts were politically motivated. The DOE’s list of completed projects “specifically targets states where the majority of Americans voted for the Democratic nominee for president,” the Colorado Office of Energy said in an October statement. The terminations “will increase energy costs, threaten grid reliability, increase pollution and create instability in our business community,” he said.
Wednesday’s lawsuit was filed by California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin, as well as the California Governor’s Office of Economic and Business Development, against DOE, DOE Secretary Chris Wright, OMB and Vought. It states that “only Congress has the power to appropriate funding and define whether and how federal programs are administered.” The plaintiffs allege that the funding cuts violate the separation of powers of the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act.
“Congress voted to fund these programs to create jobs, save us money on our utility bills, and end our dependence on dirty fossil fuels. We are suing to force Trump to understand that laws and Congress are not optional,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a statement.
The plaintiffs claim that the DOE compiled a “hit list” of energy and infrastructure awards it wanted to cut to eliminate programs created under the IIJA and the IRA.
This lawsuit follows a November one presented by St. Paul, Minnesota, and a coalition of energy and environmental groups. They sued the DOE and the OMB restore clean energy subsidiesclaiming the actions of the administration violate the First Amendment by addressing viewpoint-based speech and the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which prohibits the federal government from denying equal protection of the laws.
DOE said in an emailed statement in November that the grants were canceled based on a “comprehensive, individualized review” that found they “failed to meet one or more of the standards necessary to justify additional taxpayer funding, including, but not limited to, exceeded milestones, project feasibility, and alignment with Department priorities.”
