U.S. courts are blocking some of the Trump administration's environmental decisions
Over the past three months, U.S. federal courts have issued a series of rulings against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which had sought to cut off billions of dollars in climate grants and weaken air quality regulations implemented under Joe Biden. In more than half of the cases reviewed, judges did not side with the agency, according to The Japan Times.
One of the key cases involved standards for fine particulate matter, often referred to as “soot” standards. The Trump administration sought to overturn the stricter 2024 rules through an existing legal proceeding rather than initiating a new regulatory process with public comment. In June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously, by a vote of 3-0, upheld the stricter standards.
In July, a federal judge in California also ordered the EPA to meet a key statutory deadline for implementing these standards. The agency failed to meet that deadline while the initial court case was pending. EPA spokesperson Bridget Hirsch stated that the agency is committed to enforcing the Clean Air Act and is considering its next steps.
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At the same time, the EPA has secured several victories in cases involving minor deregulatory changes. In mid-July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the agency’s approach to calculating emissions from oil refineries and other industrial facilities. Later that same month, the court upheld an extension of deadlines for steel mills to comply with certain standards regarding hazardous emissions.
The termination of grant programs became a separate area of dispute. A court in Washington state dismissed a multi-state lawsuit seeking to overturn the $7 billion “Solar for All” program, stating that the case should be heard in a different court. At the same time, a court in South Carolina ruled that the EPA’s internal directives to terminate the Environmental and Climate Justice program were unlawful and ordered the agency to reinstate it. The EPA is appealing this decision and has secured a stay of the July ruling in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Also in August, the full panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, by a vote of six to four, ruled against the EPA in a dispute over approximately $20 billion in grants from the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Fund. The EPA halted funding in March 2025, and agency head Lee Zeldin cited fraud and abuse in the program. The agency announced that it intends to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
