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The legal landscape for the hundreds of awards that the Department of Energy canceled last fall is coming into sharper focus.
Recent developments — including the DOE’s admission in a case earlier this month that it canceled billions of dollars in funding “based solely” on a project’s location in a blue state — suggest a promising pathway for recovering funding via the court system, even as dozens of Democratic Senators call on the agency to “change course” and conduct a wholesale reinstatement of cancelled awards.
But it’s still not straightforward. Sources told Latitude Media that there are plans in the works to file a class action suit on behalf of all grants canceled last fall, but the vast majority of them are still in limbo and not represented in an active case. And court case or no, the administration is looking to make it easier to cancel future grants based on changing political priorities.
To date, plaintiffs in two lawsuits, both in federal court in Washington, D.C., have had their cancellations overturned: seven awards in a case brought by the City of St. Paul, and 11 awards in a case brought by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
