Attorney General Ellison sues to preserve clean-energy dollars for Minnesota
Co-leads coalition of four AGs in lawsuit against Trump administration for illegally blocking congressionally approved funds from flowing to state projects to reduce greenhouse gases; also sues Citibank to ensure funds are released as required by law
March 19, 2025 (SAINT PAUL) — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison today co-led a coalition of four attorneys general in suing the Trump administration to preserve federal grant dollars flowing into Minnesota for clean-energy projects that will benefit Minnesotans and their environment. Attorney General Ellison filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Minnesota Climate Innovation Finance Authority (MnCIFA), a State-created, public “green bank” whose purpose is to stimulate the development of clean energy and greenhouse gas emissions-reduction projects and help overcome existing market barriers to these projects. Attorney General Ellison joined California Attorney General Rob Bonta in leading a coalition that includes the attorneys general of Illinois and Maine in suing on behalf of their states’ public green banks. Attorney General Ellison and the coalition are also suing Citibank, which holds the funds for the federal government, to ensure those funds are released as required by law.
“I’m leading this coalition of attorneys general in opposing yet one more illegal power grab by the Trump administration because it is our job to stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law when others try to run roughshod over it,” Attorney General Ellison said. “In 2022, Congress duly passed and the president duly signed the Inflation Reduction Act that makes dollars available for clean-energy and greenhouse gas-reduction projects in Minnesota and across the country. If the current president wants to ask Congress to repeal the act and the funding that goes along with it, he is free to do so, but no president or federal agency can single-handedly undo an act of Congress, much less in the improper and disgraceful way this president and EPA have tried to go about it. We are also holding Citibank accountable for improperly complying with the government’s campaign of intimidation and freezing funds that it is required by law to release.”
The Minnesota Legislature created MnCIFA, a public corporation, in 2023. MnCIFA is a key component of the State of Minnesota’s effort to meet its goals of being 100% carbon-free by 2040 and net zero on greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Through a subgrant from the Coalition for Green Capital (CGC), MnCIFA was awarded funds from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a federal source of funds that Congress created as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. MnCIFA stands ready to deploy the funds that Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have already authorized and since early 2024, has worked diligently to solicit proposals from eligible projects.
Attorney General Ellison and the coalition allege, however, that since February 2025, the EPA has “has pursued a highly irregular and illegal campaign to thwart the $20 billion appropriation that Congress made” that flows to MnCIFA and the other state green banks in the form of subgrants and terminate the grants solely because the current president opposes the duly-enacted Inflation Reduction Act. This “violates fundamental constitutional guarantees of liberty in the separation of powers and flouts myriad statutory and regulatory controls on federal agencies’ management of Congressional appropriations and finalized awards,” they assert in the complaint.
Attorney General Ellison and the coalition further allege that co-defendant Citibank, which holds the funds for the EPA in a financial agency agreement, improperly capitulated to a February 17, 2025 letter from the FBI that demanded that Citibank freeze the GGRF funds it held, despite its being required by law to release the congressionally-approved funds upon the request of grantees and subgrantees. In response, on March 7, 2025, Attorney General Ellison led the attorneys general of Colorado, Maine, Maryland, and New York in a letter to Citibank to demand that the bank immediately unfreeze GGRF dollars.
The federal government’s improper campaign against GGRF funding also included an attempt to seize the funds Citibank holds, an abuse of power that led one of DOJ’s top criminal prosecutors to resign because she refused to proceed in the absence of evidence legally required to seize those funds. A federal judge has since denied EPA a warrant in this matter and two different U.S. attorney offices have also declined the case due to lack of probable cause.
On March 11, 2025, the EPA terminated the grants to the prime grantees of the two GGRF funding streams that Citibank holds, without explanation. MnCIFA’s and the plaintiff states’ green banks’ funding flows from CGC, one of those prime grantees. With the funds in jeopardy, the attorneys general and green banks allege wrongful termination of the grant funds and violations of federal law in the lawsuit they have filed today.
