A federal judge ruled Monday that the Trump administration violated the Constitution when it canceled roughly $8 billion in energy grants in a way that disproportionately affected recipients in Democratic-leaning states.
U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta issued a 17-page opinion finding the Department of Energy’s (DOE) grant terminations unlawful under the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee. He ordered the department to reinstate seven specific grants worth $27.6 million. Those awards were part of a broader cancellation affecting more than 200 projects announced by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought on October 1, 2025—the first day of the government shutdown.
Why it matters
Mehta said the record showed that nearly all of the affected awardees were based in states where a majority of voters did not support President Donald Trump in the 2024 election. The ruling underscores limits on executive branch decisions that treat grant recipients differently based on a state’s political identity.
According to NOTUS, the DOE’s moves fell heavily on organizations in blue states, while recipients in red states using federal funding for similar projects largely avoided termination—an outcome Mehta concluded amounted to unequal treatment.
What to know
The DOE began terminating grants after Vought posted on X on October 1 that “nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled.” He listed 16 states—California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington—none of which voted for Trump in 2024.
The following day, Trump posted on Truth Social that he had met with Vought to “determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut” during the shutdown.
Recipients initially received termination notices that did not use formal DOE letterhead. The letters said the awards were “not consistent with this Administration’s goals, policies and priorities.” A week later, the same message was resent on official agency letterhead. The grants supported projects such as electric-vehicle development, updated building energy codes, and methane emissions reduction.
NOTUS reported multiple examples of what it described as uneven treatment between similar projects in different states. The administration, according to that reporting, canceled $460 million for Minnesota transmission lines while preserving $700 million for comparable Montana work; cut Hawaii wildfire resilience funding while maintaining $160 million for Georgia Power grid resilience projects; and ended three of 17 battery-recycling projects—all in blue states—while the remaining 14 projects in red states or at national labs continued. NOTUS also reported that within the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnership program, “only projects in states that voted for Vice President Harris were cancelled on October 2, 2025, while similar projects in states that voted for President Trump were not.”
The city of St. Paul, Minnesota, and several environmental groups—including Interstate Renewable Energy Council, Plug In America, ElevateEnergy, Southeast Community Organization, and Environmental Defense Fund—filed suit challenging the terminations. The DOE argued the cancellations aligned with the administration’s energy priorities.
Mehta rejected that justification, writing that there was “no plausible rational connection” between the stated policy goals and the selective cancellation of grants in blue states. The court noted that the government conceded the seven terminated grants at issue were “comparable” to awards in red states that were not canceled, and that the main discernible difference was “the grant recipient’s state’s political identity.”
The defendants also stipulated that “a primary reason for the selection of which DOE grant termination decisions were included in the October 2025 notice tranche was whether the grantee was located in a ‘Blue State.’” Mehta dismissed the argument that federal funding decisions are exempt from equal-protection principles, writing: “There’s no federal funding exception to the Equal Protection Clause.”
What the judge said
In the opinion, Mehta wrote: “There is no reason to believe that terminating an award to a recipient located in a state whose citizens tend to vote for Democratic candidates—and, particularly, voted against President Trump—furthers the agency’s energy priorities any more than terminating a similar grant of a recipient in a state whose citizens tend to vote for Republican candidates or voted for President Trump.”
He also emphasized the limits of the ruling, noting: “By no means does the court conclude that the mere presence of political considerations in an agency action runs afoul of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.”
What happens next
The DOE must restore the seven grants identified in the ruling. The administration could appeal Mehta’s decision to a higher court.
