Boston sues DOT over $20M RAISE grant withdrawn for EV charging stations

The City of Boston filed a complaint on September 28, 2026 in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts against the US Department of Transportation, the Federal Transit Administration, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FTA Acting Deputy Administrator Matthew Cahill, asking the court to declare unlawful and vacate DOT's withdrawal of a $20 million Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) award for street improvements on Melnea Cass Boulevard, Malcolm X Boulevard and Warren Street in Roxbury. The case is stamped 1:26-cv-14419. The complaint says the project's electric vehicle charging infrastructure was "less than 1% of the grant" and that DOT's withdrawal letter gave its inclusion as the single reason.

According to the complaint, DOT issued a Notice of Award on August 30, 2022 for $20,000,000 of total estimated project costs of $33,997,896, and on September 9, 2025 Maria Lefevre, executive director of the Office of DOT's Under Secretary for Policy, sent the city a letter "withdrawing selection" of the award, effective immediately. The complaint quotes the letter's priorities as presently including "promoting traditional forms of energy and natural resources to the greatest extent possible" and "ensuring that taxpayer dollars are used efficiently in ways that maximally benefit the American people and improve their quality of life," and its finding that the grant was inconsistent with them because of the EV charging infrastructure: "Specifically, your project proposes to install EV charging stations." The letter, the complaint says, offered the city no opportunity to respond, nor any remedy or process to appeal, and the city and FTA had not yet executed a grant agreement. DOT's list of FY2022 RAISE grant agreements, updated through April 30, 2024, shows the Boston award as a $20,000,000 FTA capital grant, agreement "Pending."

The complaint says Boston offered on October 8, 2025 to remove the charging stations, describing them as "a vanishingly small aspect of the overall Roxbury Project, estimated to cost a fraction of 1% of the Boston Grant Award," followed up on December 19, 2025 and January 8, 2026, and received one reply, from FTA Regional Administrator Peter Butler: "There is no change to the status of the Roxbury Resilient Corridor project." He added: "As stated in the September 9, 2025, letter to Vineet Gupta, the project remains cancelled." The city says the withdrawal eliminated approximately 60% of the project's necessary funding and that it was forced to suspend the project and temporarily remove the reserved local matching funds from the City Streets Cabinet's five-year CFY 2027 capital plan pending the resolution of the funding dispute.

The award, the memo, the peer case and the pleadings

DOT's August 11, 2022 Massachusetts fact sheet said the city "will receive $20 million to reconstruct and upgrade three corridors," an approximately 0.88-mile section of Melnea Cass Boulevard, an approximately 0.46-mile section of Malcolm X Boulevard and an approximately 1.28-mile section of Warren Street, and that the project "will construct dedicated bus corridors, including a center running dedicated bus lane," along with new sidewalks, bus shelters, separated bicycle facilities, intersection improvements, green infrastructure, stormwater improvements and resiliency features. The sheet's project description does not mention EV charging. The complaint says the FY2022 funding notice listed installation of EV charging stations as an example of a project supporting environmental sustainability, and its first footnote says that in February 2026 Congress extended the RAISE obligation deadline from September 30, 2026 to September 30, 2031 in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026.

The complaint says Secretary Duffy issued an internal directive on or about March 11, 2025 instructing offices to review competitive award selections made after January 20, 2021 without fully obligated agreements, that the activities to be flagged included "electric vehicles (EV), and EV charging infrastructure," and that staff "should negotiate with project sponsors to update project scopes to eliminate and, where possible, replace those identified elements [including EV charging infrastructure]." Boston says DOT "never substantively responded" to its proposal and sent similar letters on September 9, 2025 to other RAISE awardees, naming Albuquerque, New Mexico and the Central Naugatuck Planning Association in Connecticut. It also cites Executive Order 14,154 of January 20, 2025, the OMB memorandum that followed it, and an April 15, 2025 District of Rhode Island order enjoining the freeze that memorandum implemented, which its citation marks as affirmed in part and vacated in part on other grounds by the First Circuit on August 7, 2026.

Albuquerque's own suit against Duffy, case 1:25-cv-01072 in the District of New Mexico, was filed in late October 2025 (its first docket entry is dated October 31, 2025; the case record's filing field says October 28). Per the docket, Chief District Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales denied the defendants' motion to dismiss on July 31, 2026; on August 14, 2026 the defendants filed a brief and response to the complaint in lieu of an answer, per the entry's title; and an August 18, 2026 order by Magistrate Judge Kevin R. Sweazea directs the parties to meet and confer by September 14, 2026, file a joint report with proposed deadlines by October 1, 2026, and attend a telephonic conference on them on October 7, 2026. A denial of a motion to dismiss is not a ruling on the withdrawal. Boston's complaint cites that July 31 opinion, as a "see also" after a 2025 District of Columbia decision, Climate United Fund v. Citibank, for the proposition that agency grant programs are governed by their authorizing statutes and that their operation is not committed to agency discretion by law.

The complaint pleads five counts: two under the Administrative Procedure Act (arbitrary and capricious; in excess of statutory authority and contrary to law), separation of powers, the Take Care Clause, and ultra vires agency action. Among the relief it asks for, lettered (a) through (i), are a declaration that the withdrawal is unlawful, vacatur, an injunction against implementing it, an order to preserve and hold $20 million in RAISE funding in abeyance during the litigation, tolling of the obligation and expenditure dates in the funding notice and award letter, to the extent those dates remain applicable given subsequent congressional action, and fees.

Responses and where the grant sits

A DOT spokesperson told the Boston Globe on September 28, 2026 that the department is reviewing the lawsuit and "remains committed to ensuring that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and in ways that benefit all Americans." Mayor Michelle Wu, in a statement the Globe quotes, said "Boston earned this competitive grant to meet community needs and address long-needed infrastructure upgrades."

Representative Ayanna Pressley, whose office said on September 18, 2025 that she had submitted a letter of support for the project to DOT in April 2022, called the cancellation "inexplicable"; per the Globe, she said on September 28, 2026, "The law is on our side here," and called the lawsuit a critical step in defense of a project her office "fought hard to secure funding for."

The RAISE award is separate from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure formula program, covered by The Duck Curve in state awards (North Carolina's conditional round-2 awards; Colorado's plazas, funded by NEVI and state funds); Boston's chargers were one element of a street project.