In a totally huge win for environmental peeps, a federal judge on Monday ruled that the Trump administration gotta give back $176 million in grants to six cities and 13 nonprofits around the United States. The decision by Judge Richard Gergel in Charleston, South Carolina, is a major blow to an administration that’s been messing with funding, chopping down agencies, and axing federal employees, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) said in a press release.
“This is like, a massive win for these organizations who can finally get back to work making their communities better. Even though the bad guys in charge wanna fight this ruling, SELC’s team is like, super pumped to take this all the way to the Supreme Court until all the grants in our case are restored once and for all,” said Kym Meyer, SELC’s litigation director, in the press release.
The judge said a final decision telling the administration to immediately give back the cash would be made in a few days, reported Inside Climate News. The Trump peeps admitted that cutting the grants based on executive orders was a no-no according to the Administrative Procedure Act.
Meyer said the ruling was “a reminder that the big guys in charge can’t just ignore Congress,” as Inside Climate News reported. The original complaint filed by the Public Rights Project and Southern Environmental Law Center in March on behalf of the nonprofits and municipalities fought against the unlawful funding freeze that forced the good guys to lay off employees and stop important programs that help communities, public health, and farmers.
“More delays and problems with our work would be really bad and basically the government saying ‘we don’t care’ about housing, jobs, and other stuff that helps the environment and society,” said Bryan Cordell, executive director of the Sustainability Institute, a nonprofit in North Charleston, South Carolina, in another press release from SELC.
The peeps taking the administration to court said that the executive orders signed by President Donald Trump earlier this year stopping the funds were just plain wrong and against free speech protected by the First Amendment. The grants reinstated by Monday’s decision were given under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Six grants that were cut by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Climate Smart-Commodities program weren’t reinstated by the ruling. The USDA program was axed last month cuz folks were worried about “wasting money” and how it matched up with the administration’s goals.
The court told SELC that it would check out its claims about the grants after hearing from the administration. SELC said it’s “pretty sure that the proof will show that cutting these grants was also illegal.”
