Urban Sustainability Directors Network v. U.S. Department of Agriculture

On August 14, 2025, the federal district court for the District of Columbia granted in part a motion for a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit seeking to block the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) from terminating six grants under various programs. The court preliminarily set aside the terminations or announced termination of the grants and enjoined enforcement of the terminations. The district court first concluded that it had jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’ claims, rejecting the defendants’ arguments that the claims were “essentially contractual” and that the Court of Federal Claims therefore had exclusive jurisdiction over the claims under the Tucker Act. On the merits, the court found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on claims that all five of the already terminated grants were likely terminated arbitrarily and capriciously because the terminations “clearly lacked sufficient explanation,” and that the terminations of two grants were contrary to statute. In particular, for a $28 million grant awarded under the Urban and Community Forestry Assistance program, the court concluded that “through the Cooperative Forestry Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress clearly intended for USDA to expend money promoting tree coverage in urban areas for the purposes of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and thus mitigating ‘global warming trends,’ which are commonly referred to as ‘climate change.’” The court found that USDA terminated the grant “for addressing these very issues Congress intended for such programs to address.” The court found, however, that the plaintiffs were not likely to succeed on constitutional due process claims because they likely could not show they had constitutionally protected property interests. In addition, the court found the plaintiffs were not likely to succeed on claims under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) that the defendants violated their grantmaking regulations or that the defendants’ policy and practice of terminating grants violated the APA. The court further found that the plaintiffs demonstrated irreparable harm, and that the balance of the equities and public interest weighed in favor of granting relief to the plaintiffs. The court denied a motion by the plaintiffs for expedited discovery, finding that the plaintiffs did not demonstrate entitlement to discovery on the merits of the claims.

Three nonprofit organizations that received grant awards from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)—including under the U.S. Forest Service Urban and Community Forestry Assistance (UCFA) program and the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program of the Natural Resources Conservation Service—filed a lawsuit to block the USDA’s “mass terminations” of grant awards. The plaintiffs alleged that the “sole basis for these mass terminations is that the grant awards allegedly no longer effectuate new USDA priorities—namely the Trump Administration’s priority to attack anything it can portray as related to diversity, equity, inclusion (‘DEI’) or climate change, regardless of the purpose of the awards or limits on agency authority.” The complaint asserted that the grant terminations violated their procedural due process rights, that the defendants’ application of the uniform guidance for federal grant awards was unconstitutionally vague in violation of due process, and that the defendants violated the Administrative Procedure Act because the mass terminations were not in accordance with law and were arbitrary and capricious. In addition, the plaintiffs argued that the termination of the UCFA awards under the Inflation Reduction Act violated separation of powers and constituted ultra vires action. The plaintiffs asked the court to vacate the terminations of their awards and to order the defendants to “return to the status quo” in relation to the awards.