Judge: Trump violated Fifth Amendment by ending energy grants in only blue states

Summary

But in this case, Trump “freely” admitted that he made grant termination decisions “primarily—if not exclusively—based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024.” And that classification had “no rational relationship” to the government’s supposed interest in cutting off funding, Mehta found, which was that projects were not “economically viable” or didn’t advance the administration’s energy goals. In fact, Mehta noted that similar projects in red states continued to receive funding. “There is no reason to believe that terminating an award to a recipient located in a state whose citizens tend to vote for Democratic candidates—and, particularly, voted against President Trump—furthers the agency’s energy priorities any more than terminating a similar grant of a recipient in a state whose citizens tend to vote for Republican candidates or voted for President Trump,” Mehta said. Trump officials offered “no explanation for how their purposeful segregation of grantees based on their electoral support for President Trump rationally advances their stated government interest,” Mehta said. Instead, “defendants concede that the political identity of a terminated grantee’s state, including the fact that the state supported Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, played a preponderant role in the October 2025 grant termination decisions.” It wasn’t a total win for plaintiffs, who did not prevail on First Amendment claims, and there are many hundreds of awardees whose grant terminations were so far not impacted by the narrow ruling. Deciding that the government had violated grantees’ rights to equal protection, Mehta only ordered a return to the status quo, reinstating seven grants totaling $27.6 million.