A protestor holds a sign in Manhattan, New York on January 25, 2022.rik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
A South Carolina federal judge this week ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to resume distributing funds designed to address environmental and health challenges in underserved communities.
In June, US District Judge Richard Gergel voided the Trump administration’s termination of the $2.8 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program. But the court ruling did not explicitly require the Environmental Protection Agency to resume distributing the block grants.
Although Gergel ruled that the government’s internal actions terminating the grants were “unlawful,” he declined to order the EPA to immediately restart the program, saying such a move would be “impractical.”
Last month, emails between the EPA and the Southern Environmental Law Center, which filed the lawsuit in partnership with the Public Rights Project, showed that government officials believed that no “specific agency action is required to comply” with Gergel’s ruling.
After reviewing additional court filings from both sides, Gergel confirmed this week that the EPA must resume distributing the grant funds. He rejected the Trump administration’s argument that his decision “required no further agency action.”
“When federal agencies ignore court orders, communities pay the price.”
In his latest order, Gergel wrote that the Trump administration’s interpretation of the initial ruling relied on an interpretation of the facts the court had already “specifically rejected.”
“The court made it clear that EPA has to follow the law, not keep making the same arguments the court has already rejected,” Toby Merrill, the litigation director for Public Rights Project, said in an email. “When federal agencies ignore court orders, communities pay the price.”
Gergel ordered that the agency “must comply with its statutory obligations to administer the [Environmental and Climate Justice] Program” through the end of September, when the grants were originally scheduled to expire under President Joe Biden.
Since the latest order was issued, Kym Meyer, the Southern Environmental Law Center’s litigation director, said her organization “hasn’t heard” from the EPA.
The Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program, created under the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, was designed to help communities address problems like air pollution and extreme heat and bolster local infrastructure, according to federal budget documents.
“While the EPA has tried to evade the court’s order, families in north Mecklenburg were left waiting for basic transparency about the air they breathe.”
At the start of his current term, President Donald Trump issued executive orders that put the disbursement of Inflation Reduction Act funds on hold and directed agencies to eliminate environmental justice offices and positions, to the maximum extent allowed by law. An EPA official told the court that he decided to terminate the program in February 2025 because of “policy reasons,” court documents show.
One $500,000 grant was intended to help CleanAIRE NC, a North Carolina-based nonprofit, install air quality monitors throughout Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte. Residents there face health impacts from air pollution because of their proximity to major highways and industrial activity.
“While the EPA has tried to evade the court’s order, families in north Mecklenburg were left waiting for basic transparency about the air they breathe,” said Jeffrey Robbins, the executive director of CleanAIRE NC, in an email. “We are ready to put these critical air monitoring resources to work in north Mecklenburg the moment the agency complies.”
In response to questions from Inside Climate News, a spokesperson for the EPA said in an email that the agency “is reviewing the decision and working to comply with the court’s order.”