By Dietrich Knauth and David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from withholding funds awarded to 14 states including California, New York, Illinois and Washington for electric vehicle charger infrastructure.
U.S. District Judge Tana Lin in Seattle, Washington, ruled that the states were likely to succeed in a lawsuit alleging that the federal government was illegally withholding billions of dollars awarded to states for building EV charging stations.
The U.S. Transportation Department in February suspended the $5 billion EV charging program, which was part of former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, and rescinded prior approval of states’ spending plans.
Lin’s ruling did not apply to District of Columbia, Minnesota and Vermont, which also sued over the funding rescission but did not provide evidence that they would suffer immediate harm as a result of the Transportation Department decision.
Lin’s ruling will take effect in seven days, which gives the Trump administration time to file an appeal and ask an appellate court to block her ruling from taking effect.
“The administration cannot dismiss programs illegally, like the bipartisan Electric Vehicle Infrastructure formula program, just so that the President’s Big Oil friends can continue basking in record-breaking profits,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
A spokesman for the White House and Transportation Department did not immediately comment.
The states said in their lawsuit that the Trump administration’s withholding of the funds “will devastate the ability of states to build the charging infrastructure necessary for making EVs accessible to more consumers, combating climate change, reducing other harmful pollution, and supporting the states’ green economies.”
Lin said in her ruling that states were harmed by the Trump administration’s policy shift because they had dedicated their own resources to EV infrastructure in the expectation of further funding from the federal government.
Republicans have sought to wind back support for EVs on numerous fronts.
California and 10 other states this month filed suit challenging a repeal by Congress of the state’s 2035 electric vehicle rules and heavy duty truck requirements.
A bill passed by the U.S. House in May would end a $7,500 tax credit for new EVs and repeal vehicle emissions rules designed to prod automakers into building more EVs.
The U.S. General Services Administration said EV charging stations not deemed mission critical at government buildings would be deactivated and in March declared that no new government EV charging station installations were authorized.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington and Dietrich Knauth in New York; Editing by Sandra Maler, Jamie Freed and Lincoln Feast)
