A federal judge on April 15, 2025, ordered the current US administration to take “immediate steps” to reinstate already awarded funding from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), after the latter had broadly frozen the disbursements on the first day in office, i.e. January 20, 2025.
The judge of the US District Court for Rhode Island ordered the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Interior and Agriculture, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, to release awards previously withheld, after the ruling found the agencies lacked authority to freeze the funding. As per the ruling, agencies do not have unlimited authority to further a president’s agenda, nor do they have unfettered power to hamstring in perpetuity two statutes passed by Congress during the previous administration.
The decision applies to all awardees nationwide, and will remain in effect until the judge rules on the merits of the lawsuit.
The decision is a blow to the US president’s plans to dismantle the previous administration’s hallmark climate funding law. The IRA, passed in August 2022, provides hundreds of billions of dollars in direct funding and loan financing. It also offers lucrative tax credits for manufacturers that meet domestic production requirements, incentivizing a host of companies to invest in domestic facilities over the past three years. The IIJA, known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, also provides billions of dollars in clean energy funding.
Following the funding freeze, six non-profits — Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council, Eastern Rhode Island Conservation District, Childhood Lead Action Project, Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation, Green Infrastructure Center, and National Council of Nonprofits — sued the agencies in March 2025, in a bid to access their awarded funding, after other court orders failed. The judge’s recent grant of a preliminary injunction requires agencies to “turn the funding spigots back on” while the case is pending.
The judge wrote that the groups, which claimed the freeze violated the Administrative Procedure Act, successfully proved that the “sudden, indefinite freeze of all already awarded IIJA and IRA money was arbitrary and capricious: it was neither reasonable nor reasonably explained.” The need to offer relief to awardees nationwide was highlighted, given the far-reaching impacts of the freeze on organizations’ operations and local reputations.
The judge also felt that after finding that the government’s sweeping actions were likely unlawful, similarly situated non-parties should not remain subject to them, just because there was not enough time or resources for them to join the legal action.