States Sue Over Freeze on Funding for Electric-Vehicle Charging

A coalition of states led by Washington, Colorado and California sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, charging that it was unlawfully withholding billions of dollars allocated by Congress for electric-vehicle charging stations across the United States.

The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law provided $5 billion to states to build stations around the country. So far, 71 stations have been built, with many more in development, according to the research firm Atlas Public Policy.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle, states that federal agencies have unlawfully frozen those funds and halted approvals for new stations, depriving states of critical resources and damaging the growing electric-vehicle industry.

The White House budget proposal released last week said that it was canceling funding for “failed electric-vehicle-charger grant programs.” President Trump had already taken aim at the program in a January executive order, and the Transportation Department followed with a similar memo the next month. But cutting the funding entirely would require approval from Congress, the lawsuit argued.

“The president continues his unconstitutional attempts to withhold funding that Congress appropriated to programs he dislikes,” said Rob Bonta, the California attorney general. “This time he’s illegally stripping away billions of dollars for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, all to line the pockets of his Big Oil friends.”

Nearly two million “zero-emission vehicles” have been sold in California, one-third of the nationwide total and part of a longstanding effort in the famously car-centric state to reduce air pollution. California had been relying on $384 million from the federal program for charging stations, according to Mr. Bonta’s office.