On Thursday, March 13, 2025, GreenLatinos sued the federal government for unlawfully freezing federal grants passed under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation (BIL). GreenLatinos was awarded an Urban and Community Forestry federal grant from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) US Forest Service (USFS) to regrant to cities and NGOs to provide tree planting services. Our grant was frozen on day one of the administration due to an Executive Order, leaving GreenLatinos with nearly half a million dollars in unreimbursed expenses, not knowing if the program would be started up again or if our contract would be terminated.
We joined the Earthjustice litigation with seven other organizations and farms who had their USDA grants frozen. We are demanding that the funding that we run through our Justicia Y Equidad Intermediary Fund is and remains unfrozen.
GreenLatinos has built alliances with trusted community leaders nationwide to ensure that communities have the resources to fight and win their climate battles. The freeze in federal funding has had a chilling impact on GreenLatinos and our partners representing communities across the U.S. For our communities, the threat of permanently losing these funds has forced GreenLatinos to impose a hiring freeze, stop consultant contracts, and make plans for staff furloughs.
The harm from freezing GreenLatinos’ funds further ripples out as we have also had to pause the work with our subawardees who, as a result, cannot proceed with their tree planting programs before the spring planting season closes and have had to reconsider the viability of their programs. Protecting some of our country’s most vulnerable communities from the substantial effects of climate change is at stake – and that’s why we’re holding the Trump administration accountable.
As a valued GreenLatinos partner, we want you to be the first to hear about this important step. We are proud to advance this issue in collaboration with EarthJustice and are grateful to the many funders and partners who have taken steps to assist small non-profit organizations like ours in navigating litigation. Your solidarity makes all the difference.
For more information, read about the case here and here. If you want to learn more about this work, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.
Mark Magaña
Founding President and CEO
GreenLatinos
