A federal judge in Seattle has blocked the Trump Administration’s decision to withhold $5 billion in funds that the Biden administration had approved for expanding the EV charging infrastructure in the U.S.
Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump froze the Department of Energy’s (DOE) $50 billion budget and withheld $5 billion in funding approved by bipartisan majorities in Congress for electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure.
California co-led a coalition of 17 attorneys general who in May sued the Trump Administration “for unlawfully withholding billions of dollars in funding” for EV charging infrastructure.
AGs from Arizona, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Vermont, and the District of Columbia filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington State.
This week, U.S. District Judge Tana Lin in Seattle, Washington, temporarily blocked the Trump Administration from withholding the funds.
The judge’s ruling does not apply to the District of Columbia, Minnesota, and Vermont, which were part of the lawsuit but didn’t prove they would incur immediate harm from the withholding of the funds.
The ruling will come into effect in seven days. The Trump Administration will have time to appeal and ask an appeals court to block the judge’s ruling.
“The administration cannot dismiss programs illegally, like the bipartisan Electric Vehicle Infrastructure formula program, just so that the President’s Big Oil friends can continue basking in record-breaking profits,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement, commenting on the judge’s ruling.
The Trump Administration and California have locked horns on many clean energy and environmental issues, often leading to lawsuits.
In one of the latest such examples, fuel producers just scored a green light from the nation’s highest court to go after California’s aggressive emissions standards. In a 7-2 decision last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that energy companies do, in fact, have standing to challenge the EPA’s 2022 decision that allowed California to impose tougher emissions and electric vehicle mandates than the federal baseline.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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