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Green & Healthy Homes Initiative, Inc. v. EPA
Green & Healthy Homes Initiative, Inc. v. EPA ↗
1:25-cv-01096D. Md.2 entries
Filing Date
Type
Action Taken
Document
Summary
06/17/2025
Decision
Terminations of grants vacated and case remanded for further proceedings.
The federal district court for the District of Maryland ruled that EPA’s terminations of environmental and climate justice block grants awarded under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). As initial matters, the court concluded that it had jurisdiction under the APA to hear the claims and that the terminations of the grants were reviewable under the APA because the actions were not committed to agency discretion by law. On the merits, the court found that EPA acted in excess of its statutory authority because “the stated basis for terminating these grants”—a policy objection to “environmental justice” programs—was “entirely incompatible with the statutory mandate” to support environmental and climate justice. The court also found that the terminations were arbitrary and capricious due to the “lack of any reasoned decision-making, or reasoned explanation,” which was “compounded by the fact that the terminations reflect a reversal of EPA’s prior polices under which these grants” were awarded. The court did not reach the plaintiffs’ claims that the terminations violated the First Amendment and conflicted with federal grant regulations. As a remedy, the court vacated the terminations of the plaintiffs’ grants and remanded for further proceedings.
04/02/2025
Complaint
Complaint filed.
Three nonprofit organizations located in Baltimore, Minneapolis, and Seattle that had been named Regional Grantmakers and awarded grants under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Maryland challenging EPA’s termination of their initial grant awards. The complaint alleged that the Thriving Communities program was established by the Inflation Reduction Act, which appropriated $3 billion to EPA for “climate and environmental justice block grants” and mandated that the funds by used to support activities that monitor, prevent, and remediate pollution and mitigate climate risks in “disadvantaged communities.” The plaintiffs asserted that the termination of the initial grant awards constituted arbitrary and capricious agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act because EPA provided only “vague and baseless grounds” for the action: (1) that the grants were inconsistent with EPA’s newly adopted “Agency priority” to withdraw financial support from “organizations that promote or take part in … ‘DEI’ [or] ‘environmental justice’ initiatives”; (2) that the organizations’ programs were purportedly not “free from fraud, abuse, waste, or duplication”; and (3) that the programs “otherwise fail to serve the best interests of the United States.” The complaint also asserted that EPA acted in excess of its authority under the Clean Air Act as amended by Inflation Reduction Act; that EPA’s actions infringed the organizations’ rights under the First and Fifth Amendments; and that EPA failed to abide by federal grant regulations.