Court says Trump admin illegally blocked billions in clean energy grants
to Democratic states
[January 13, 2026]
By MATTHEW DALY
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge ruled Monday that the Trump
administration acted illegally when it canceled $7.6 billion in clean
energy grants for projects in states that voted for Democrat Kamala
Harris in the 2024 election.
The grants supported hundreds of clean energy projects in 16 states,
including battery plants, hydrogen technology projects, upgrades to the
electric grid and efforts to capture carbon dioxide emissions.
The Energy Department said the projects were terminated after a review
determined they did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or
were not economically viable. Russell Vought, the White House budget
director, said on social media that “the Left’s climate agenda is being
canceled.”
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said the administration's action violated
the Constitution’s equal protection requirements.
“Defendants 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," Mehta wrote
in a 17-page opinion. The administration offered no explanation for how
their purposeful targeting of grant recipients based on their electoral
support for Trump — or lack of it — "rationally advances their stated
government interest,” the judge added.
The ruling was the second legal setback for the administration’s
rollback of clean energy program in a matter of hours. A separate
federal judge ruled Monday that work on a major offshore wind farm for
Rhode Island and Connecticut can resume, handing the industry at least a
temporary victory as Trump seeks to shut it down.
A spokesman for the Energy Department said officials disagree with the
judge’s decision on clean energy grants.
Officials “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,” spokesman Ben
Dietderich said. “The American people deserve a government that is
accountable and responsible in managing taxpayer funds.”
Projects were canceled in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware,
Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New
Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state. All
16 targeted states supported Harris.
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Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought
speaks to reporters at the White House, Thursday, July 24, 2025, in
Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
The cuts include up to $1.2 billion for California’s hydrogen hub
that is aimed at accelerating hydrogen technology and production,
and up to $1 billion for a hydrogen project in the Pacific
Northwest. A Texas hydrogen project and a three-state project in
West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania were spared, according to
clean-energy supporters who obtained a list of the DOE targets.
The city of St. Paul and a coalition of environmental groups filed a
lawsuit after they lost grants.
Trump said in an interview last fall with One America News, a
conservative outlet, that his administration could cut projects that
Democrats want. “I’m allowed to cut things that never should have
been approved in the first place and I will probably do that,” Trump
said in the Oct. 1 interview.
Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund,
one of the groups that filed the suit, said the court ruling
“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.”
The administration’s actions violated the Constitution, foundational
American values and “imposed high costs on the American people who
rely on clean affordable energy for their pocketbooks and for
healthier lives,” Patton said.
Anne Evens, CEO of Elevate Energy, one of the groups that lost
funding, said the court ruling would help keep clean energy
affordable and create jobs.
“Affordable energy should be a reality for everyone, and the
restoration of these grants is an important step toward making that
possible,” she said.
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