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The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the termination of an environmental justice agreement Friday. An order handed down by a federal judge Tuesday, April 15, placed five federal agencies under an injunction mandating they resume the processing and payment of grant funding.

Mary S. McElroy, U.S. District Judge of Rhode Island issued the order in a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA), Energy, Interior, Environmental Protection (EPA), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Office of Management and Budget and their presiding secretaries and directors. The preliminary injunction orders, in part, that:

“the departments of Energy, EPA, HUD, Interior and USDA are enjoined from freezing, halting, or pausing on a non-individualized bases the processing and payment of funding that (1) was appropriated under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and (2) has already been awarded;

“the departments of Energy, EPA, HUD, Interior and USDA take immediate steps to resume the processing, disbursement and payment of already awarded funding appropriated under the [acts]…, and to release awarded funds previously withheld or rendered inaccessible…”

The agencies are required by the injunction to send written notice to grantees awarded under the aforementioned acts and to appraise the court of the status of their compliance with the order.

The decision was issued in response to the lawsuit filed by Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council, Eastern Rhode Island Conservation District, Childhood Lead Action Project, Codman Square Neighborhood Development Center and National Council of Nonprofits against the federal agencies after President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order forbade agencies from administering any more IIJA and IRA money while the agencies reviewing spending to ensure its consistency with presidential policy directives.

According to court documents, the agencies stopped providing money to organizations spearheading initiatives supported by the two acts even when those agencies had already awarded the funds.

McElroy expressed her opinion in the order, writing she wished to protect all who may be impacted by Trump’s executive order and the subsequent DOJ directive.

“It would be anathema to reasonable jurisprudence that only the named Nonprofits [in the lawsuit] should be protected from the irreparable harms of the likely unlawful agency actions. That is because ‘when a reviewing court determines that agency regulations are unlawful, the ordinary result is that the rules are vacated — not that their application to the individual petitioners is proscribed,’” McElroy wrote.

To read the McElroy’s order, visit https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wSlVV1G-ygC3YN_eOd64E_7ZbnSMjkro/view?usp=sharing.