Judge rules EPA illegally terminated $7 billion solar program intended to help poorer Americans

The Trump administration illegally terminated a $7 billion Solar for All program intended to make solar power accessible to more than 900,000 lower-income Americans, a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled Friday.

The Environmental Protection Agency rescinded the Solar for All funds in August 2025 after President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending law passed in Congress a month earlier, with Administrator Lee Zeldin calling the Biden-era grant program a “boondoggle.”

District Judge Mary McElroy wrote in the ruling that Congress clearly intended the EPA to continue administering the Solar for All grants that were already obligated. The EPA acted contrary to this intent and without any other statutory authority when it terminated the program, McElroy wrote. She vacated the termination.

The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

The lawsuit filed in Rhode Island by the Rhode Island AFL-CIO labor organization and others — including the public interest law center Rhode Island Center for Justice and the nonprofit Solar United Neighbors — highlighted the importance of the program for local workforces and lower-income communities seeking access to clean-energy project funding.

Patrick Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, called the decision “a big victory” for states across the country.

“If and when the program does get up and running, there will be thousands and thousands of union jobs created across the United States,” he said Friday. “We were proud to be the lead plaintiff.”

Clean, affordable power like solar shouldn’t be a luxury, said Alex St. Pierre, vice president for environmental justice at Conservation Law Foundation, one of the nonprofit legal advocacy groups representing the plaintiffs.

“Communities have waited long enough,” St. Pierre said in a statement. “Nearly every family is looking for ways to cut their energy bill. These dollars should go where Congress intended: toward lower energy bills, less climate pollution, good jobs and cleaner air.”

In May, for the first time, solar supplied more of the nation’s electricity than coal.

The Trump administration has targeted a host of programs and policies dedicated to clean energy. The $7 billion Solar for All program was part of the $27 billion “green bank,” formally known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. It was established in the Democratic-backed climate law passed in 2022 under former President Joe Biden. The attorneys general of more than a dozen states also sued over the canceled solar program funding. A federal judge in Washington dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction in June. The plaintiffs have appealed.

The other $20 billion, also canceled by the Trump administration, was slated for eight community development banks and nonprofit organizations for tens of thousands of projects to combat the effects of climate change, such as residential energy efficiency projects to larger-scale investments such as community cooling. A divided federal appeals court said last month that the Trump administration improperly terminated the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, handing a win to a coalition of nonprofits picked to run the effort.

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