A federal judge has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency acted unlawfully when it eliminated a $2.8 billion program created to clean up some of the most polluted communities in the country, voiding the cancellation and handing a significant victory to environmental and civil-rights advocates.
U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel found that the agency’s decision to terminate the Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program — a Biden-era initiative funded through the Inflation Reduction Act — was, in his words, “arbitrary and capricious and unlawful.” The ruling, issued June 12, 2026, struck down the internal guidance the agency used to end the program.
A program built for the communities that carry the heaviest burden
The Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program was designed to send money directly to neighborhoods that have spent decades living next to refineries, highways, ports, and industrial plants. These are the places that carry the heaviest pollution burden and historically have had the least political power to push back against it. For residents in those communities, the $2.8 billion represented a rare and concrete commitment that the federal government was finally paying attention to the air they breathe and the water they drink.
The program was terminated in 2025 following executive orders that targeted federal funding tied to renewable energy and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. An EPA official told the court that, after a review, he decided to end the program for “policy reasons.” The Southern Environmental Law Center, in partnership with the Public Rights Project, challenged that decision in court.
What the judge actually ruled
Judge Gergel was direct in his assessment. He wrote that there was “no doubt” the internal guidance terminating the program was arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful — a legal standard that means the agency failed to provide a reasoned basis for such a sweeping reversal. On that finding, he voided the cancellation.
But the ruling came with an important limit. Gergel stopped short of issuing a permanent injunction that would force the EPA to resume administering the program. He noted that such an order would likely require the federal government to rehire the staff responsible for overseeing the grants — staff the administration had already fired — making a forced restart “impractical.” He also declined to extend the program’s September deadline for awarding the grant funds.
In plain terms: the cancellation is legally dead, but the money is not automatically flowing again. The court has invalidated the action that killed the program, yet the practical path to actually getting those dollars into communities remains unresolved.
Why this matters
The decision is a notable check on how far an administration can go in dismantling congressionally funded programs through internal guidance alone. Courts have repeatedly held that agencies cannot reverse major commitments without explaining their reasoning, and Gergel’s ruling reinforces that principle in a high-stakes environmental context.
For the communities the program was meant to serve, the ruling is both a vindication and a source of uncertainty. The court has affirmed that the law was broken. What it has not yet resolved is whether that legal victory will translate into real resources reaching the families living in the shadow of heavy industry — the people the program was designed to protect in the first place.
That question now hangs over everyone involved: the agency, the advocates who won in court, and the residents waiting to see whether a promise made and then withdrawn will finally be kept.