Houston environmental advocates joined a class-action lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency last week to recover billions in federal grant funding cut by the Trump administration.
The nonprofit Air Alliance Houston hopes to restart the work it was leading to engage residents in a 10-county area and alert them when companies apply for pollution permits in their community. The program expected to use over $3 million in grant money from an Inflation Reduction Act program that funded “environmental and climate justice community change grants.”
“Our grant would have helped people who live day-to-day with air pollution to have a meaningful say in the environmental decisions that affect their lives,” said Jennifer Hadayia, the group’s executive director. “We joined this suit because we believe everyone has the right to breathe clean air.”
Air Alliance was not alone: at least 10 Houston-area grants, and hundreds more across the country lost funding when new EPA leadership culled programs listed under climate or environmental justice. Other canceled grants paid for everything from disaster preparedness and flood damage mitigation to workforce development in the renewable energy sector.
“EPA’s termination of the program is unlawful,” the class-action suit says. “It violates bedrock separation-of-powers principles by effectively repealing a congressional enactment and impounding funds based on nothing more than the President’s disagreement with policies Congress duly enacted.”
Earthjustice, Southern Environmental Law Center, Public Rights Project and Lawyers for Good Government, which spearheaded the litigation, argued that the EPA could not legally claw back congressionally-appropriated grant funds based on the new administration’s policy differences, especially not “en masse” without individual review.
Their lawsuit seeks to restart programs led by the 350 grant recipients across the U.S., which included local governments, tribes, universities and nonprofit organizations.
I don’t have a post about the initial action, so this is what I know about this. I also know that Houston and Harris County have been pretty successful in similar actions over grant cuts, so I feel good about their chances here. I wish them all the best. See Air Alliance Houston’s statement for more.