Since U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta vacated the cancellation of 11 clean energy grants on June 12, the Department of Energy has formally settled that case, according to reporting by Latitude Media and Utility Dive.

The settlement is the second major court loss for DOE this year on the same underlying issue.

What DOE Agreed To

As part of the settlement, DOE agreed not to contest that "a primary reason" for determining which grants to cancel was whether the awardee was located in a state that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, according to Latitude Media. The 11 grants, totaling $82.1 million, funded projects in New York, Oregon, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Colorado. All 11 were issued through DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

The plaintiffs were led by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. One plaintiff, the New Buildings Institute, had four Oregon grants canceled in the October 2025 terminations.

The Admission That Wright Is Contradicting

The settlement puts DOE's legal position in direct conflict with Energy Secretary Chris Wright's public statements. Testifying before the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee on June 10, Wright was asked by Rep. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.) whether politics drove the cancellations. "No decisions were made on politics," Wright said, according to Latitude Media. "I keep hearing that charge. Its bullshit. We're gonna say it a million times. Its not true. Its actually false."

DOE's lawyers signed a settlement saying a primary cancellation criterion was blue-state location. Wright's words and DOE's legal filings cannot both be true.

Wright did not say at the June 10 hearing whether he would reinstate the hundreds of additional awards still terminated. DOE did send Congress a list in April of nearly 2,000 Biden-era awards it was retaining, but Latitude Media reports only 18 of those had appeared on the department's October 2025 cancellation list.

How This Case Got Here

The October 2025 cancellations came during a government shutdown. At the time, OMB Director Russ Vought posted on X that nearly $8 billion in funding was being cut for projects in "blue states," according to Latitude Media. That post has since anchored the plaintiffs' legal theory in every subsequent lawsuit.

The first legal defeat came in January, when Judge Mehta ordered DOE to reinstate seven awards totaling $28 million after ruling in favor of the City of Saint Paul and other organizations. That ruling established the precedent that the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment bars the federal government from targeting grant recipients based on the political composition of their state's electorate. The June settlement, also signed by Mehta, follows the same logic.

The Strongest Counter-Argument

The administration's defenders raise a legitimate point: Biden-era grant portfolios were concentrated heavily in Democratic-leaning states because those states had more aggressive clean energy policies and more organizations applying for federal funding. Under that reading, a geographic audit of grants could look politically skewed without actually being politically motivated. Wright has consistently pushed this framing. It is a coherent argument that a federal court has twice now rejected at the settlement or ruling stage, but it is not frivolous on its face.

The administration also retains the right to appeal both the January ruling and the June settlement, according to Latitude Media. No appeal has been filed as of June 13, 2026.

What's Still Unresolved

Two larger cases are working through the courts. A coalition of states including California and New York has a pending lawsuit. The University of California system has filed a separate case. Both target the broader scope of DOE's October 2025 terminations, which affected more than 300 awards, according to Latitude Media.

Several of the largest canceled projects remain terminated, including the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub and the Arches Hydrogen Hub in California. Neither is covered by the settlements to date.

DOE has the option to appeal. Whether Wright's department will fight the two pending multistate cases or settle them the same way is the concrete question hanging over the rest of 2026's clean energy grant litigation.