Appalachian Voices v. EPA

The federal district court in the District of Columbia denied Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant recipients’ emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal of the court’s August 29, 2025 dismissal on jurisdictional grounds of their challenge to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s termination of their grants. The court found that harm to the plaintiffs if the grant funds were returned to the Treasury was not irreparable, given that the plaintiffs admitted that individual grantees could file in the Court of Federal Claims to seek damages for breach of the grant agreements. The court also found that injuries to third parties from loss of funding for “vital projects” was not a basis to find irreparable harm. The Court also found that the plaintiffs could not show a likelihood of success on the merits, even if the “legal landscape is in flux.”

The federal district court for the District of Columbia dismissed a class action challenging EPA’s termination of Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants awarded pursuant to the Inflation Reduction Act. The court concluded that it did not have jurisdiction over the grant recipients’ claims under the Administrative Procedure Act that the terminations were arbitrary and capricious or contrary to law. Instead, the court determined that the Court of Federal Claims had exclusive jurisdiction over the claims under the Tucker Act because the plaintiffs’ claims were contractual. The court also ruled that the grant recipients could not bring separation of powers and Presentment Clause claims because these constitutional claims were predicated on “underlying statutory violations” of the Clean Air Act and Inflation Reduction Act, and D.C. Circuit precedent prohibits bringing “freestanding” constitutional claims if the underlying violation is statutory.

Grantees under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant program filed a class action in federal district court in the District of Columbia challenging the termination of the program. The plaintiffs described themselves and proposed class members as “community-based nonprofit organizations, Tribes, local governments, and higher education institutions” that had each received one or more grants from the program. The complaint asserted that the termination violated separation of powers, the Presentment Clauses of the Constitution, and the Administrative Procedure Act.