New Delhi, Aug. 5 -- WASHINGTON - The money has been sitting at Citibank for more than a year, locked there by the Environmental Protection Agency in a freeze that shut out eight nonprofit organizations from $20 billion in congressional clean energy grants. On Tuesday, the full United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the EPA had likely broken the law to put it there.

The court reversed a three-judge panel that had sided with the administration in September 2025, ruling that the EPA's cancellation of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund violated the Inflation Reduction Act because the agency had acted on a policy disagreement rather than any documented legal authority. The decision is the most consequential a...