Judge restores USD 7 billion Solar for All after Trump EPA cancellation
A federal judge in Rhode Island on Friday ruled that the Trump administration illegally ended the USD 7 billion Solar for All programme, which was meant to make solar power available to more than 900,000 lower-income Americans.
The Environmental Protection Agency cancelled the programme in August 2025, a month after President Donald Trump’s large tax and spending law was passed by Congress. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin had described the Biden-era grant programme as a “boondoggle”.
District Judge Mary McElroy said Congress had clearly intended the EPA to continue administering Solar for All grants that had already been obligated. In her ruling, she said the agency acted against that intent and had no other statutory authority to terminate the programme. She vacated the termination.
The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
The case was filed in Rhode Island by the Rhode Island AFL-CIO and others, including the public interest law centre Rhode Island Centre for Justice and the non-profit Solar United Neighbours. The lawsuit underlined the importance of the programme for local workforces and for lower-income communities seeking access to clean-energy project funding.
Patrick Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, called the ruling “a big victory” for states across the country.
“If and when the programme does get up and running, there will be thousands and thousands of union jobs created across the United States,” he said on Friday. “We were proud to be the lead plaintiff.”
Alex St Pierre, vice president for environmental justice at Conservation Law Foundation, one of the non-profit legal advocacy groups representing the plaintiffs, said clean, affordable power such as solar should not be a luxury.
“Communities have waited long enough,” St Pierre said in a statement. “Nearly every family is looking for ways to cut their energy bill. These dollars should go where Congress intended: toward lower energy bills, less climate pollution, good jobs and cleaner air.”
In May, solar supplied more of the nation’s electricity than coal for the first time.
The Trump administration has targeted several programmes and policies linked to clean energy. The USD 7 billion Solar for All programme was part of the USD 27 billion “green bank”, earlier known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. It was created under the Democratic-backed climate law passed in 2022 during former President Joe Biden’s term. Attorneys general from more than a dozen states also sued over the cancellation of the solar programme funding, but a federal judge in Washington dismissed that case for lack of jurisdiction in June. The plaintiffs have appealed.
The other USD 20 billion in the fund, also cancelled by the Trump administration, had been meant for eight community development banks and non-profit organisations for tens of thousands of projects to tackle the effects of climate change, from residential energy efficiency work to larger community cooling investments. Last month, a divided federal appeals court said the Trump administration had improperly terminated the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, giving a victory to a coalition of non-profits chosen to run the effort.
The ruling on Solar for All restores a programme aimed at expanding access to solar power for lower-income Americans, while also adding to the legal challenges faced by the administration over its cancellation of clean-energy funding.
