Court vacates the EPA's termination of the $7bn Solar for All programme
Victoria Shinder2 min readA federal judge has vacated the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to end the $7 billion Solar for All programme, finding that the agency illegally terminated grant funding it had already obligated. Utility Dive reported the ruling on 22 September 2026; the decision issued on 18 September from the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island.
"When an agency acts outside the bounds of its statutory authority, it violates the [Administrative Procedure Act]," wrote Judge Mary McElroy. Against the government's argument, she held that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed on 4 July 2025, did not convert Solar for All funding into a lump sum subject to EPA discretion: "Congress's clear intent was that EPA continue to administer the already obligated SFA grants," and terminating the programme was therefore contrary to law and in excess of statutory authority.
Solar for All formed part of the roughly $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund created by the Inflation Reduction Act, directed at helping low-income and disadvantaged communities. According to the decision, the EPA obligated the funding by a September 2024 deadline, with the funds available for five years. Congress repealed the greenhouse gas reduction fund in the OBBBA, and the EPA terminated Solar for All and its existing grants about a month later, with Administrator Lee Zeldin saying the agency no longer had the statutory authority or the appropriated funds to continue it.
What it means
The ruling turns on the difference between repealing a fund and clawing back money already obligated out of it, and that distinction is the whole of the decision. Congress removed the programme's future; the court held it did not thereby authorise the agency to undo commitments already made.
For the grantees the practical position is not yet restored money. A vacatur returns the termination decision to the agency and invites the next procedural step rather than ending the matter, and an appeal is the ordinary expectation in a case of this size. The reusable point for anyone holding a federal award sits in the sequence: obligation created a legal position that survived the repeal of the programme that created it, which is precisely the question every recipient of multi-year federal funding is currently asking about their own agreement.