A federal judge in Rhode Island blocked Trump administration agencies from freezing funds awarded through two high-profile laws enacted during the Biden administration — a bipartisan infrastructure law and a separate climate, tax and health care package.
Judge Mary S. McElroy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island on Tuesday ruled in favor of groups that filed a lawsuit last month, after a Trump executive order in January instructed agencies to “immediately pause” the disbursement of funds appropriated via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act from 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
On his first day in office, Trump called for “terminating the Green New Deal” in the order, which affected a wide range of programs.
McElroy, a Trump appointee, in an order granting a preliminary injunction, wrote that she wanted to be “crystal clear” that the president is “entitled to enact his agenda” and the judiciary “does not and cannot decide whether his policies are sound.”
But, she wrote, federal courts are required to weigh in on cases about the procedure the government uses when attempting to enact those policies.
“Agencies do not have unlimited authority to further a President’s agenda, nor do they have unfettered power to hamstring in perpetuity two statutes passed by Congress during the previous administration,” McElroy wrote.
The judge ruled that the groups had shown “at least three ways that the sudden, indefinite freeze” of awarded money was “arbitrary and capricious.”
“It was neither reasonable nor reasonably explained,” she added.
McElroy also sought to justify the need for a nationwide injunction, rather than one only affecting the organizations who filed the lawsuit.
“After finding that the Government’s sweeping actions were likely unlawful, the Court cannot see why similarly situated nonparties should remain subject to them,” McElroy wrote.
“Nonparties in exactly the same circumstances should not be forced to suffer the harms just because there was not enough time or resources for them to join the suit,” the judge added.
The order blocks specific agencies from freezing already awarded funding appropriated under the two Biden-era laws. The order applies to the agencies in the lawsuit: the Department of Energy, the EPA, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture.
The order also compels those agencies to take “immediate steps” to resume the disbursement of funding under the two statutes, and to release “awarded funds previously withheld or rendered inaccessible.”
The Trump administration agencies, according to the judge, also did not show that they had thought about “the consequences of their broad, indefinite freezes: projects halted, staff laid off, goodwill tarnished.”
The Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council, a nonprofit that sued, has a $1 million grant from the U.S. Forest Service, but it’s been frozen since January “because the grant was funded under the IRA,” according to the lawsuit filed last month.
Another group in the case, the Eastern Rhode Island Conservation District, has a nearly $350,000 grant from EPA. But the grant is funded under the IRA and the organization has not been able to carry out certain work because its grant “has been frozen on and off for weeks,” according to the suit.
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