A federal judge ordered the Department of Energy on Monday to restore nearly $28 million in environmental project grants for recipients located in states where Donald Trump lost to Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that DOE’s move violated discrimination protections under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, though he tossed out another set of claims that the cancellations ran afoul of First Amendment safeguards for free speech.
“The key question is whether Defendants’ deliberate grouping of awardees based on whether the state in which they reside voted for President Trump is rationally related to DOE’s stated objective of aligning grant funding with the new administration’s priorities,” wrote Mehta, an Obama appointee. “To ask the question is to answer it.”
The cancellations at issue in the case were among more than 300 awards totaling $7.56 billion that DOE canceled in October at the start of the government shutdown.
Mehta in his ruling noted the “unusual” nature of the terminations, writing that they were initially delivered not on official DOE letterhead, but on letters with the “Department of Energy” typed at the top. He also noted that DOE spared nearly identical projects in states that went for Trump in 2024.
The judge wrote that while political considerations do not automatically invalidate an agency action, there must be a rational relationship between the government’s interests and its decision to draw such a distinction between grant recipients.
Mehta disagreed, however, with the challengers’ claims that DOE’s grant cancellations violated the First Amendment’s prohibition of retaliation against protected speech.
The challengers — a group that includes the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota, and the Environmental Defense Fund — could not assert the First Amendment rights of the residents of the states in which they reside, he found.
A DOE spokesperson said the department disagreed with the ruling and said it had determined that the awards were not a justifiable use of taxpayer dollars.
“The American people deserve a government that is accountable and responsible in managing taxpayer funds,” DOE said in a statement.
Challengers in the case celebrated the decision.
“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,” Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement. “The administration’s damaging actions violated the U.S. Constitution, foundational American values, and basic decency, and it imposed high costs on the American people who rely on clean affordable energy for their pocketbooks and for healthier lives.”
Mehta tossed out DOE’s October termination notices related to the seven awards targeted in the litigation. He also ordered briefing by Friday on whether the parties will seek to permanently stop DOE from using political considerations as a basis for any future grant determination for parties in the case.
