Case: City and County of San Francisco v. Department of Energy

(This summary is temporary while we research the case further). 

On June 5, 2026, the City and County of San Francisco filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and its Secretary, challenging a newly imposed grant condition on federal cooperative agreement funding. San Francisco had been a member of DOE's Clean Cities and Communities Coalition Program (Clean Cities Program) for over thirty years, receiving federal funding to support alternative fuel vehicle adoption, electric vehicle infrastructure, and emissions reduction efforts. On or before April 12, 2026, DOE posted updated Standard Terms and Conditions applicable to all DOE awards, including a provision referred to as the "Discrimination Condition," which required all funding recipients to certify upon each drawdown or reimbursement request that they do not operate programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that violate federal anti-discrimination laws, and to concede that such compliance is "material" for purposes of the False Claims Act (FCA), 31 U.S.C. § 3729(b)(4). San Francisco alleged that the Discrimination Condition was impermissibly ambiguous, as it failed to define key terms such as "diversity, equity, and inclusion," and that the Trump administration's interpretation of anti-discrimination law diverged from judicial interpretations of those statutes and effectively treated a broad range of DEI programs as unlawful contrary to Supreme Court precedent. The City further alleged that the Department of Justice's announced "Civil Rights Fraud Initiative" threatened FCA liability, including treble damages, against recipients that pursued DEI policies deemed discriminatory by the administration, placing San Francisco in an impossible position with respect to its $130,000 Clean Cities cooperative award and a separate $20 million DOE grant under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. San Francisco asserted five causes of action—violation of separation of powers, violation of the Spending Clause, and three violations of the Administrative Procedure Act—and sought declaratory relief, injunctive relief, vacatur of the Discrimination Condition, and an award of attorneys' fees and costs.