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.”

Class action by grantees challenging the termination of the Inflation Reduction Act’s Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant program.

Appalachian Voices v. EPA

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D.C. Federal Court Denied Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grantees’ Request for Injunction Pending Appeal of Dismissal of Challenge to Grant Terminations

Filed

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An aim to achieve a quantifiable outcome within a given time-frame, set by an institution such as a national government.

Policy instruments are techniques or tools used by governing authorities to promote certain policies in order to achieve predetermined goals. Put simply, instruments are how a government tries to achieve its goals, with this taxonomy being focused on national policy instruments.

Risk is the potential for adverse consequences resulting from the dynamic interplay between (climate-related) hazards, exposure, and vulnerability of affected human or ecological systems.

Groups  of people who are adversely affected by climate change or the response to it

A set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy.

Justice is the ethical and political framework that addresses fairness, including issues of responsibility, rights, and structural inequity.

Renewable energy means all forms of energy produced from renewable sources in a sustainable manner.

Fossil fuel is a generic term for non-renewable energy sources such as coal, fossil gas, and oil (including crude oil, and petroleum products), that can be used for electricity and heat generation. Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons formed from pressurised and heated organic material buried over millions of years.

Molecules in the atmosphere that play a key role in the greenhouse effect by trapping heat radiating from Earth’s surface.

Area of the economy in which actors engage in identical or related activities.

In human systems, the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate change and its effects, in order to moderate harm, increase resilience or exploit beneficial opportunities. In natural systems, the process of adjustment to actual climate change and its effects; human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate change and its effects.

The management and allocation of funds, assets and investments to meet various objectives

Either money or something of monetary value is transferred between two or more organisations, people or countries.

Actions to reduce emissions in energy generation and supply.

People with different national or cultural traditions from the dominant population

Social and cultural groups that share collective ancestral ties to the lands and natural resources where they live, occupy or from which they have been displaced

D.C. Federal Court Denied Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grantees’ Request for Injunction Pending Appeal of Dismissal of Challenge to Grant Terminations

Impacted group

Finance