Environmental justice communities press Feds over $3 billion in stalled funding
Reprinted from Inside Climate News
Plaintiffs are continuing to press the Trump administration in federal court to restore $3 billion in grant funding for environmental and climate justice programs that would benefit underserved communities, as a Sept. 30 deadline nears.
The plaintiffs in the litigation over the Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant program filed a motion late Tuesday asking the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina in Charleston to effectively put on hold the grants’ original expiration date at the end of September. Last week the plaintiffs filed a separate petition in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asking the full court to reconsider a previous ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that prevented the disbursement of the funding.
The Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant program, established in 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, offered grants for community-driven initiatives such as enhancing natural disaster preparedness, expanding workforce development opportunities, improving air quality, mitigating stormwater and flood damage and combating high energy costs.
The Trump administration canceled the program in 2025 as part of a widespread dismantling of environmental and equity-related initiatives across the federal government. The litigation was filed soon after on behalf of grant recipients who were forced to stop or could not begin work on urgently needed projects. Among the grant recipients was a Florida community that aimed to address local water pollution and drinking water problems related to a legacy of segregation and systemic lack of investment.
In July a federal judge ruled the Environmental Protection Agency must resume administering the program through the end of September. The federal government appealed the ruling, and a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals granted the government a stay pending appeal by a 2-1 vote, again leaving communities without funding. The panel consisted of Allison Rushing, appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term; Toby Heytens, appointed by former President Joe Biden; and Paul Niemeyer, appointed by former President George H.W. Bush.
In their request for a full court review involving all 18 judges, the plaintiffs argued the federal government has “never meaningfully claimed their program termination was lawful, relying instead on jurisdictional defenses.” The plaintiffs said the stay warrants a review because it conflicted with a previous Supreme Court ruling and was based on a misreading of the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Without the full court’s intervention, they said, the government may prevail merely by running out the clock.
The EPA declined to comment on pending litigation.
The urgency of the situation prompted the plaintiffs separately to request a pause of the statutory deadline pending appeal. Kym Meyer, litigation director at the Southern Environmental Law Center, one of the groups involved in the litigation, was concerned the problems could discourage applicants from seeking grants from the federal government in the future.
“The bottom line is it’s now clear that what the government did was illegal,” she said. “This has been a complete nightmare for our clients for a year and a half now. And it just feels really hard, that they’ve done everything right and been right on the law, and they’re still having to suffer through all of this. And the communities throughout the country have not gotten this funding.”
PHOTO/Wikimedia Commons FEMA Photograph by Leif Skoogfors
