Coalition of States Sues EPA, Zeldin Over Solar Grants
More than 20 states and Washington D.C. filed a lawsuit last week against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Administrator Lee Zeldin over the agency’s cancellation of more than $7 billion in Solar For All grants.
The lawsuit, filed Oct. 16 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, accuses the EPA and Zeldin of “unilaterally and illegally” terminating the grants, which were established by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and aimed at expanding access to rooftop solar for low-income communities.
Signed into law in early July, the One Big Beautiful Bill championed by President Trump rescinded all “unobligated funds” from the program. The funds in question, however, were allocated by August of last year, before the Sept. 30, 2024 deadline established under the IRA, according to the plaintiffs.
In early August of this year, Zeldin announced the EPA was “ending Solar for All for good” and issued termination directives to all grant recipients, according to the plaintiffs. The directives said the agency no longer had the “statutory basis or dedicated funding” for the Solar For All program.
“Within one week … (the EPA) illegally and arbitrarily liquidated and removed from Plaintiffs’ ASAP accounts approximately 90% of the funds that were obligated to Plaintiffs before August 16, 2024, despite the fact that H.R. 1 explicitly limited rescission to funds that were unobligated as of July 3, 2025,” the lawsuit reads.
The struggle over the fate of Solar For All started earlier this year.
Trump issued an executive order shortly after taking office in January instructing agency heads to pause disbursement of funds allocated through the IRA and the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act. The EPA subsequently froze Solar For All funds, but a district court judge in Rhode Island granted a preliminary injunction on March 6 following a lawsuit.
On March 3, the EPA moved to initiate an investigation into the entire $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which houses Solar For All and two other IRA-era programs. In a press release, the agency alleged “misconduct, waste, conflicts of interest, and potential fraud.” Last week’s lawsuit claims the probe has not yet been completed.
The lawsuit is the fourth filed this month related to the dismantling of Solar for All. A coalition of renewable energy advocates on Oct. 6 filed a legal challenge against the EPA and Zeldin. On Oct. 14, Harris County, Texas sued the agency over its clawback of a roughly $250 million grant. And on Oct. 15, a group of Solar for All grant recipients filed a breach-of-contract action against the EPA, seeking monetary damages.
–Reporting by Colt Shaw, cshaw@opisnet.com; Editing by Jordan Godwin, jgodwin@opisnet.com
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