Court says Trump admin illegally blocked billions in clean energy grants to Democratic states

A federal judge ruled Monday that the Trump administration violated constitutional equal protection requirements by canceling $7.6 billion in clean energy grants specifically targeted at states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta issued a 17-page opinion striking down the administration’s actions, noting that officials “freely admit that they made grant-termination decisions primarily — if not exclusively — based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024.”

The ruling affects hundreds of clean energy projects across 16 states, including battery plants, hydrogen technology initiatives, electric grid upgrades, and carbon capture efforts. All affected states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington — supported Harris in the recent election.

The Energy Department had claimed the projects were terminated after a review determined they “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or were not economically viable.” White House Budget Director Russell Vought had previously declared on social media that “the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled.”

Judge Mehta found this reasoning insufficient, writing that the administration offered no explanation for how their targeting of grant recipients based on electoral support “rationally advances their stated government interest.”

The decision represents a significant setback for the administration’s efforts to dismantle clean energy initiatives. Among the canceled projects were California’s hydrogen hub, which stood to receive up to $1.2 billion to accelerate hydrogen technology and production, and a Pacific Northwest hydrogen project allocated up to $1 billion. Notably, hydrogen projects in Republican-leaning states — including Texas and a three-state initiative in West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania — were spared from cuts.

Energy Department spokesman Ben Dietderich expressed disagreement with the ruling, stating, “We stand by our review process, which evaluated these awards individually and determined they did not meet the standards necessary to justify the continued spending of taxpayer dollars.”

The legal challenge was brought by the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, and a coalition of environmental groups after they lost grant funding. Their argument was bolstered by Trump’s own statements in an October interview with One America News, where he said, “I’m allowed to cut things that never should have been approved in the first place and I will probably do that.”

This ruling came just hours after another federal judge delivered a separate legal defeat to the administration’s energy rollbacks, allowing work to resume on a major offshore wind farm project for Rhode Island and Connecticut. Together, these decisions represent significant judicial pushback against the administration’s energy policy.

Environmental advocates celebrated the ruling. Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, said the court “recognized that the Trump Department of Energy vindictively canceled projects for clean affordable energy that just happened to be in states disfavored by the Trump administration, in violation of the bedrock Constitutional guarantee that all people in all states have equal protection under the law.”

Anne Evens, CEO of Elevate Energy, one of the organizations that lost funding, emphasized the economic impact of the ruling: “Affordable energy should be a reality for everyone, and the restoration of these grants is an important step toward making that possible.”

The legal battle highlights the increasing politicization of energy policy in the United States. Clean energy advocates have expressed concern that partisan approaches to energy development could hamper the country’s ability to modernize its infrastructure and compete globally in emerging technologies, while supporters of the administration’s actions argue that federal spending on certain clean energy initiatives represents government overreach and poor fiscal management.