A coalition of solar energy companies, labor unions, nonprofit groups and homeowners sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday over its termination of $7 billion in grants intended to help low- and moderate-income families install solar panels on their homes.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Rhode Island, accused the agency of illegally revoking the money under the Solar for All program without congressional approval. It expanded an ever-widening legal battle over President Trump’s efforts to claw back billions of dollars in climate funding that had been approved by the Biden administration.
The lead plaintiff is the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, a group of labor unions that had trained electricians and other workers to install solar panels in the state. While the unions did not directly receive funds under the Solar for All program, they had been counting on work that would have followed a $49.3 million grant to the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources.
“Now that the program is on hold, potentially hundreds of job opportunities are lost,” said Patrick Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO. He said the Trump administration had jeopardized hundreds of additional jobs for his members by ordering work to halt on several wind farms off the coast of New England.
“It’s not just a one-two punch to the work force that I represent,” Mr. Crowley said. “It really is a one-two punch to the entire state of Rhode Island because our energy costs need to be controlled, and renewable energy sources like solar and wind are a key component of that.”
Other plaintiffs include a homeowner in Atlanta who had applied for free rooftop solar panels from an initiative supported by a $156 million grant to the Georgia Bright Communities Coalition and companies that install solar panels in Georgia and Pennsylvania.
The plaintiffs are represented by nonprofit legal advocacy groups including the Southern Environmental Law Center and Lawyers for Good Government. E.P.A. representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit.
The Solar for All program was not only intended to help low- and moderate-income homeowners. It was also meant to expand community solar initiatives, which bring solar energy to people who don’t own their own homes or otherwise can’t install their own panels.
The program was projected to help 900,000 households get access to solar power, according to estimates by the Biden administration. The idea was to reduce the use of fossil fuels, the leading driver of climate change, while also helping to lower electricity bills. The participating households were expected to collectively save $350 million each year on utility costs.
Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, said in August that he was ending the Solar for All program at the behest of Congress. He said that Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill, which Congress passed in July, had eliminated what he called “billions of green slush fund dollars” under Solar for All.
“The bottom line again is this: E.P.A. no longer has the authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive,” Mr. Zeldin said in a video posted to social media.
But in the lawsuit, the coalition argued that the bill revoked only climate grants that the E.P.A. had not yet awarded. Under the Biden administration, the agency had awarded the Solar for All grants to 60 state agencies, nonprofit groups and Native American tribes.
The claim that the bill rescinded the Solar for All grants is “patently false and legally unsupportable,” said Jillian Blanchard, vice president of climate change and environmental justice at Lawyers for Good Government.
The Solar for All program was established by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s signature climate law. The measure authorized a total of $27 billion in grants for green activities like installing electric vehicle charging stations and retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency.
Last month, an appeals court ruled against several nonprofit groups that had $16 billion in such grants frozen by the E.P.A. In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that it lacked jurisdiction to hear the case and that the Trump administration had acted legally in its attempts to claw back the funds.
Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, said that because the case was essentially a dispute between the government and grant recipients, it belonged in the Court of Federal Claims. The lawsuit filed Monday is unlikely to face a similar setback, legal experts said, since it was not brought by the grant recipients.
Maxine Joselow covers climate change and the environment for The Times from Washington.
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