Shortly after taking office, President Trump froze funding already allocated to various parties, citing the Administration’s disapproval of issues including climate change and social equity. Additionally, executive agencies removed content discussing climate change from websites.

Unsurprisingly, these actions have been challenged in court. Parties whose funding was frozen sued on the grounds that the freezes violated statutes including the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) or their constitutional right to free speech. While cases remain pending in courts across the country, initial decisions show a pattern of courts rejecting the initial funding freezes and agencies agreeing to restore website content.

Below, we break down three recent decisions in The Sustainability Institute v. Trump, Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council v. US Department of Agriculture (USDA), and Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York v. USDA.

Background

Shortly after his inauguration, President Trump signed several orders that froze or terminated congressionally appropriated funds under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). The orders are Unleashing American Energy, Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, andImplementing the President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Cost Efficiency Initiative(previously discussed here, here, and here). In addition, agencies ordered their staff to take down climate-related webpages from their sites.

Below, we discuss three cases where courts ruled against agencies who terminated funding or took down websites on the grounds that the actions violated the APA and First Amendment.

The Sustainability Institute v. Trump

The Sustainability Institute v. Trump involves a challenge in South Carolina federal court by nonprofit groups and local governments to a freeze to federal climate funding by agencies including the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), USDA, and the US Departments of Energy (DOE) and Transportation (DOT). The funding was appropriated by US Congress and contractually awarded to municipalities and nonprofits before the Trump Administration sought to freeze it.

The challengers alleged:

• That the freeze orders violate the APA by terminating funding with no process or notice.
• That denying funding violates the separation of powers principle of the US Constitution and the executive’s duty under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution to “faithfully execute[]” the laws of the United States by failing to distribute funds appropriated by Congress.
• That EPA violated their First Amendment right to free speech by engaging in viewpoint discrimination by ordering nonprofits to remove disfavored language from grants and threatening to revoke federal funding for groups that draw attention to climate change or equity issues.

In response, the government argued, without evidence, that termination decisions were supported by reasoning made on an individualized grant by grant basis, rather than because they were funded by the IRA and IIJA, and therefore were justified.

In April, the court ordered the five agencies to produce all documents from January 20 to present, relating to the freeze, pause, and/or termination of any of the grants identified by the plaintiffs in their motion for expedited discovery. EPA and other agencies responded by releasing over 130,000 pages of documents containing internal EPA emails, spreadsheets, and other materials pertaining to the freezes. Even with these productions, the plaintiffs argued there was no evidence that EPA and other agencies made grant-specific determinations to terminate funding.

Following these productions, the government conceded that, at least for this case, it would “not contest[] the merits of a majority of plaintiffs’ APA claims” that grant decisions were not made on an individualized basis as required, but they maintain the admission is “for purposes of this case only.” On May 20, the court entered judgment in favor of the plaintiffs on the APA claims, granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction, and denied staying injunctive relief requiring the funding to be reissued.

Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council v. USDA

In Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council v. USDA, a court reached a similar holding. This case involves a challenge by several nonprofit organizations to the freezing of funding appropriated under the IRA and IIJA. Last month, the court issued a nationwide preliminary injunction, ordering five federal agencies — DOE, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, USDA, US Department of the Interior, and EPA — to “take immediate steps to resume the processing, disbursement, and payment of already-awarded funding appropriated under” the IRA and IIJA, and prohibited those agencies from “freezing, halting, or pausing on a non-individualized basis the processing and payment” of such funding.

When EPA argued that it should be allowed to continue its freeze on nearly 800 IRA grants that had been terminated or had terminations p­­­­­­­­­ending, the court ordered that the grants be unfrozen before sending termination notices, and urged EPA to expedite the termination process for the grants it believes it can legally revoke. The case is now on appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York et al. v. USDA

Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Yorkalso reached a similar outcome. In that case, several nonprofits sued the USDA seeking to enjoin the government from erasing webpages focused on climate change. The plaintiffs’ complaint alleges that USDA violated the APA when it took down government websites containing climate content, including statutorily required climate-related policies, guides, datasets, and other resources, without advance notice or reasoned decision-making.

The USDA originally argued that the environmental groups had failed to show that relief was warranted and that the removals should stand because it was in the public’s interest to have government websites that reflect the current presidential Administration’s priorities. However, USDA recently reversed course and committed to restore climate change-focused webpages that were taken offline. Going forward, USDA stated that it would restore required websites and that it was committed “to complying with any applicable statutory requirements in connection with any future publication or posting decisions regarding the removed content, including, as applicable, the adequate-notice and equitable-access provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act and the reading room provisions of [the Freedom of Information Act].” The parties are expected to submit a joint status report in early June.