Shauneen Miranda
WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — The legal battle over aBiden-era climate programramped up late Wednesday when an appeals court halted a federal judge’s ruling requiring the disbursement of those funds.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will keep funds frozen in Citibank accounts while a federal suit over the program is ongoing.
The appeals court order reversed a preliminary injunction that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan of theDistrict of Columbiaissued Tuesday that temporarily barred the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from “unlawfully suspending or terminating” grant awards.
The appeals panel said it had not had access to Chutkan’s opinion explaining her order granting an injunction — which came a day after the order itself —and the trial judge had therefore not met the high bar needed to issue a preliminary injunction. The panel’s order “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits,” the judges said.
“The purpose of this order is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the district court’s forthcoming opinion in support of its order granting a preliminary injunction together with” the government’s appeal, the judges wrote.
Chutkanissued her opinionthe day after granting the preliminary injunction, pointing out that “for weeks, despite repeated inquiries to Citibank and EPA, Plaintiffs received little to no communication from EPA or Citibank regarding their inability to access their funds.”
“Overnight, billions of dollars appropriated by Congress were frozen. As a result, nationwide projects were halted, workplans were disrupted, and millions of dollars in approved transactions with committed partners could not be disbursed,” she wrote.
On Thursday, the D.C. Circuit panelasked thegovernment to refile its argument responding to Chutkan’s opinion by 5 p.m. Eastern on Saturday.
Fight over funding
Climate United Fund and other organizations sued President DonaldTrump’s administration and Citibankin March over money frozen in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
The $27 billion initiative, which provides funding to organizations building for energy-efficient projects and other measures to tackle climate change, was authorized by Congress as part of the Inflation Reduction Act that Democrats passed along party lines and President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022.
Chutkan’s order blocked the administration from “directly or indirectly impeding” Citibank or causing the bank to “deny, obstruct, delay, or otherwise limit access to funds in accounts established in connection with” the organizations’ grants.
The Trump administrationquickly challenged that rulingWednesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The higher court temporarily blocked Chutkan’s decision “pending further order.”
The appeals court’s ruling halts Chutkan’s preliminary injunction to the extent that it “enables or requires Citibank to release, disburse, transfer, otherwise move, or allow access to funds.”
The higher court also prevented the Trump administration from having to file a status report with the district court within 24 hours of the preliminary injunction’s entry that confirmed their compliance, as outlined in Chutkan’s ruling.
The appeals court also ordered that “no party take any action, directly or indirectly, with regard to the disputed contracts, grants, awards or funds.”
The EPAsaid in Marchit would be terminating $20 billion in grants under the program, and the agency’s administrator Lee Zeldin described the climate initiative as a “gold bar” scheme.
Climate United Fund did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday, and the EPA declined to comment.
