A $7 billion federal government grant program for solar promotion, authorized during the Biden administration, was reinstated by a federal judge Friday in a ruling that rebuffed the Trump administration’s efforts to cancel it.
Mary McElroy, a U.S. district court judge for the Rhode Island district, wrote in her ruling that the current Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “termination of the Solar for All program is declared unlawful.”
Money was appropriated in 2022 for a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund under the Inflation Reduction Act that later spawned the $7 billion Solar for All grant program in June 2023. Congress at the time dedicated billions to the program and a separate smaller amount in the millions for its administration by the EPA.
Funds for the grant program would be used to “create and expand low-income solar programs that provide financing and technical assistance, such as workforce development, to enable low-income and disadvantaged communities to deploy and benefit from residential solar,” the Biden-era EPA wrote.
Current EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on Sept. 7 criticized the program, saying that canceling it would save taxpayers billions of dollars.
“The One Big Beautiful Bill eliminated the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which included a $7 billion pot called ‘Solar for All’,” he said in a statement announcing the program’s cancellation.
“EPA no longer has the statutory authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive.”
An audit of the program found that as of early August 2025, the program’s 60 grant recipients had “drawn down approximately $71 million, or 1.02 percent, of the obligated funds for various aspects of project planning and implementation.”
The Trump EPA canceled the program. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), the current Congress canceled some funds for administering the program and rescinded Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund money that was not already obligated.
The EPA noted that none of the plaintiffs suing the government were actually grant recipients. Instead, they were prospective subrecipients or third-order beneficiaries, such as unions. The government argued that they lacked standing to sue.
McElroy disagreed on the standing question. She also interpreted OBBBA’s text to mean that “existing grants were not to be rescinded” and that only minor “unobligated” funds could be clawed back.
Practically, all of the funds were spoken for by designated recipient organizations. What that means is that, unless reversed on appeal, the current EPA may find itself obligated to give out the remaining nearly $7 billion in solar promotion subsidies from the Biden era.
Patrick Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, told The Epoch Times that he was “very pleased with the ruling.”
The union president said he did not “think the federal government should appeal” as the ruling makes “very clear that this program should never have been stopped by the EPA in the first place.”
Carolyn Holran, a spokesperson for the EPA, indicated Crowley might be disappointed by her agency’s next steps.
“EPA is reviewing the decision and considering options for appeal,” she told The Epoch Times.
Crowley said the total Rhode Island slice of federal funding should come to $49 million, which would provide “thousands of good-paying union jobs.”
Unions and the Trump administration have often been at loggerheads over green projects. Crowley said that they had notched up legal victories on offshore wind projects and solar grants, and promised more.
“We won’t back down in our efforts to protect our members’ jobs while we build a new carbon-free economy,” he said.
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