Two federal judges ruled in September that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acted unlawfully when it canceled a $7 billion solar program, including a $25.1 million grant meant to put solar panels and batteries on hundreds of homes on the Hopi Reservation north of Winslow. Neither ruling ordered the agency to release the money and the government’s deadline to appeal does not arrive until November.
The grant went to the Hopi Utilities Corporation, a company owned by the Hopi Tribe, under the EPA’s Solar for All program. When the agency announced the $25.1 million award on April 22, 2024, it was stated that the utility and its partners, Arizona State University and the Hopi Renewable Energy Office, would install home solar and storage systems at no up-front cost to residents and that 35% of Hopi households had no electricity while grid-connected households suffer from frequent and extended outages. The tribe’s 2025-2030 economic development strategy describes the project as systems for approximately 550 homes, with a grant period running from Oct. 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2029, and 2025 set aside for planning.
Federal spending records on USAspending.gov show the utility had drawn $421,000 of the award when the EPA terminated the program on Aug. 7, 2025. Across the program, the 60 grant recipients had drawn about $71 million, or 1.02%, of the $7 billion by that date, according to an audit the EPA’s Office of Inspector General released Jan. 7. The rest remains in the Treasury account used for the program, which stays open until Sept. 30, 2031, according to a sworn declaration by EPA Deputy Chief Financial Officer Gregg Treml filed in one of the cases.
The cancellation rests on one sentence of the budget law President Trump signed on July 4, 2025. Section 60002 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act says the part of the Clean Air Act that created the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which included Solar for All, “is repealed and the unobligated balances of amounts made available to carry out that section (as in effect on the day before the date of enactment of this Act) are rescinded.” The Congressional Budget Office scored the provision as saving $19 million in administrative and oversight funding, according to the Congressional Record as cited in one of the opinions.
Court records show how the agency acted on that sentence. At 5:20 a.m. on Aug. 7, 2025, Associate Deputy Administrator Travis Voyles emailed Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi a memo recommending that the agency “terminate the Solar for All (SFA) program and all existing grants because the EPA no longer has a statutory basis or dedicated funding to continue administering and overseeing (them).” Fotouhi agreed about three hours later and identical termination notices went to every grantee that evening; according to the inspector general’s audit, the notices required closeout reports within 120 days and the return of unused funds. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin posted on X, formerly Twitter, that afternoon that the agency “no longer has the statutory authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive” and was “ending Solar for All for good.”
The Hopi utility said in a statement on its Facebook page that the EPA “sent out termination notifications of Solar for All (SFA) grant awards to all recipients, including the Hopi Utilities Corporation.” Solar for All, the statement said, “is the primary grant that HUC had been awarded under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act to bring solar home systems to Hopi households and create economic and workforce development opportunities for the Hopi Tribe.”
On Sept. 18, U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy of Rhode Island ruled that Congress rescinded only money the EPA had not yet committed and that ending grants it had already obligated was “contrary to law and in excess of its statutory authority.” McElroy, a Trump appointee, pointed to the House committee markup of the bill, where Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., said that “if a grant was already given, as far as this bill is concerned, then that would still be going forward.” She declared the termination unlawful and vacated it.
Four days later, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan in Washington, D.C., reached the same result in a suit by Harris County, Texas, a direct grantee. Chutkan, an Obama appointee, found the EPA’s decision “arbitrary and capricious, contrary to law and in excess of statutory authority” and set it aside for the whole program, rejecting the agency’s request to limit her ruling to Harris County’s grant.
Neither judge ordered the EPA to reinstate a grant or pay anyone and both opinions explain why. Citing an August 2025 Supreme Court order in a dispute over National Institutes of Health grants, the judges wrote that a district court may set aside the policy behind a termination but may not order payment under the grant agreements, claims that belong in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Chutkan wrote that vacating the decision “would return the question of plaintiff’s grant to EPA, which would retain discretion to reconsider the termination, terminate again on adequate grounds, or reach any other outcome the statute permits.” Under federal appellate rules the government has 60 days from the entry of judgment to appeal, which puts the deadlines in November.
Where the Hopi Tribe stands in the litigation is unclear from the public record. When the Rhode Island suit was filed on Oct. 6, 2025, Lawyers for Good Government, one of the groups representing the plaintiffs, issued a release saying the complaint was filed on behalf of eight plaintiffs including the Hopi Tribal Council. The complaint stamped by the court that day names eight plaintiffs, among them a Rhode Island labor federation, an Atlanta homeowner, nonprofits and solar installers and no tribal government and McElroy’s opinion lists the same eight. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office, announcing two suits of its own on Oct. 16, 2025, described the Hopi grant as one that “would have improved energy access for nearly 600 Hopi homes, many of which had never before had access to electricity,” but the tribe is not among the listed parties and a federal judge in Washington state dismissed the states’ district-court case on June 1, sending their claims to the Court of Federal Claims, according to McElroy’s opinion.
The tribe’s leadership has changed since the cancellation. Timothy L. Nuvangyaoma, who was chairman when the award was made, has been succeeded by Lamar B. Keevama, whom the tribe’s website lists as chairman alongside Vice Chairman Mikah H. Kewanimptewa. The new administration inherits a budget still shaped by the 2019 closure of the Navajo Generating Station and the Kayenta Mine: the tribe’s economic development strategy says Peabody coal leases historically produced 88% of its general fund and a tribal narrative submitted to the U.S. Economic Development Administration put the closure’s cost at 1,360 to 1,904 jobs and “an 85% reduction to the Tribe’s revenue.”
What the tribe has to work with in the meantime is much smaller. The Interior Department’s Tribal Electrification Program awarded the utility $4.2 million on March 5, 2024, an announcement Secretary Deb Haaland made during a visit to the tribe and $6 million on Sept. 26, 2024. Interior has estimated that bringing electricity to a home not on or near a grid costs roughly $70,000, a rate at which the two awards would reach fewer than 150 homes. The EPA also selected the utility in September 2024 for a $20.1 million Climate Pollution Reduction Grant to build a solar and battery microgrid with 11.9 miles of new distribution line, which the agency said would, “combined with other federal investment,” bring first-time power to nearly 900 homes; the EPA’s website still describes it as a selected application.
The reservation’s grid problems predate all of it. The tribe’s strategy says about 65% of Hopi homes have electricity, that the tribe “receives less than reliable power from Arizona Public Service Company over old 69 kV lines” that are “well over 40 years old,” and that the primary infrastructure “is near capacity and is vulnerable to long outages due to weather.” The utility’s own application to federal economic development officials summed it up in a sentence: “Hopi’s electric system is lacking and unreliable.”
Both courts have now ruled and the opinions do not say what the agency will do with the grant accounts next. Chutkan wrote that she would not presume the EPA would disregard her order and that if the agency proceeded to close out the grants on the ground that the budget law required it, “the court will consider further relief.”
