Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee filed a lawsuit Monday contesting the Trump administration’s cancellation of more than $400 million in solar energy grants earmarked for Texas-based organizations.

The federal funding, part of a $7 billion Biden-era program known as Solar for All, was meant to help lower-income families access solar panels and battery storage systems. It was expected to save participants an estimated $1,740 annually on their utility bills, county officials said. 

Across Texas, cities and nonprofits also planned to outfit community centers and minority-serving colleges with solar panels, so the technology’s potential to lower electricity bills and mitigate power outages could be shared with nearby neighborhoods. 

But the funding’s fate was never secure after President Donald Trump took office in January and directed a barrage of government actions to batter renewable energy and unleash fossil fuels. 

For months, Solar for All grants were frozen and then unfrozen as Texas-based organizations struggled to stand up their various programs. In August, the Environmental Protection Agency pulled the plug on Solar for All, citing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed into law the previous month. 

"The bottom line is this: EPA no longer has the authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive," EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in August. "EPA is taking action to end this program for good."

In his Monday lawsuit, Menefee stated that the Big Beautiful Bill gave the EPA no such authority to cancel the Solar for All grants, as those funds had already been legally committed to the program. 

“EPA has time and again disparaged Solar for All… making plain its determination to shut them down by whatever means necessary — legal or not,” Menefee wrote in his legal complaint. 

Harris County had led other municipalities across the state, including Dallas County, Austin, San Antonio and Waco, in winning $250 million in grants from Solar for All in 2024. This was one of the largest awards from the countrywide program.

The EPA’s cancellation of funding caused “irreparable harm” to Harris County and its constituents, Menefee wrote, as all work on the county’s Solar for All programs have stopped. 

“It jeopardizes the county’s ability to deliver critical infrastructure promised to create thousands of well-paying jobs, protect residents from extreme weather by reinforcing the county’s electrical grid, and reduce energy costs for tens of thousands of low-income households,” Menefee wrote in his complaint. 

About half of the funds the county received were to go towards developing community hubs with the ability to produce solar energy, so that if the grid failed, residents could still go somewhere for power, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said at a Wednesday afternoon news conference.

“For communities like ours along the Gulf Coast, these hubs mean the difference between safety and suffering in the next storm,” Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, a Democrat representing Houston's 7th Congressional District, said at the news conference.

The EPA declined to comment on Harris County's lawsuit, citing the agency's “longstanding practice” to not comment on current or pending litigation. 

Harris County’s lawsuit is the second to push back against the EPA’s cancellation of Solar for All. Last week, a coalition of solar companies, labor unions, nonprofits and homeowners sued the agency to restore the program’s funding in a lawsuit filed in Rhode Island. 

Menefee, who is running to represent Houston’s historically Black 18th Congressional District, has made his willingness to sue the Trump administration a key selling point of his candidacy. 

In June, his lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services successfully restored $20 million in public health funding to a coalition of local governments led by Harris County. 
View this article in the Houston Chronicle.