Judge sides with Fresno over federal funding fight

FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – A judge is siding with the City of Fresno over a fight to keep federal funding the city says they’ve already been promised. 

The judge issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday in the city’s quest to keep federal funding for airport expansion and other projects. This comes after the city already had won a temporary restraining order to keep the money. 

This step is an even bigger win for the city. 

This summer, the city filed a lawsuit with a few other California municipalities over what they called “vague” and “unauthorized” conditions they say were added to grant agreements by the Trump administration’s United States Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Transportation. 

This comes after President Trump signed executive orders that put limits on language that could be used in grant requests, like the word “equity.” The order is at times at odds with state law over how grant requests could be written. 

Those conditions put the City of Fresno at risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars. A press release from the city at the time of the lawsuit’s filing states the city receives over $11 million in HUD grants each year and was expecting $100 million allocated for transportation projects from the DOT. 

City Attorney Andrew Janz said at the time that they filed the lawsuit reluctantly, but that they had no other choice. 

“The coalition cities led by the City of Fresno welcome this ruling. We will have a more in-depth statement tomorrow. At the end of the day, this has never been about partisan politics but rather the preservation of Congressionally authorized funds for Housing and Airport funding allocated to Fresno,” Janz said in a statement late Tuesday night. 

At the time of the restraining order, City Councilmember Nick Richardson said in an interview with our news team that this lawsuit wasn’t about politics, and the city was not taking an ideological stance on any issue. 

“This really has very little to do with personal politics, has very little to do with what we’re hearing from the news with DEI or woke or anything along those lines. It really has to do with you’ve put us in a place where our laws are going to follow one side or the other, which is not fair to our constituents. And shutting off guaranteed moneys or grants to them is not a situation anybody wanted to be in,” Richardson said in August. 

City Councilmember Mike Karbassi released a statement Tuesday on the injunction, saying it’s good news for Fresno. 

“This ruling is a major win for local government and makes the court’s temporary restraining order permanent. This means the City of Fresno can move forward with our airport expansion, housing initiatives, and other critical other projects that are funded with federal dollars. We never asked to be put in the middle of the food fight between the President and the Governor. All we want to do is meet our obligations to the residents and businesses within our city and honor the will of the Congress when it appropriated these tax dollars back into our local economy,” he wrote. 

It’s not clear if the Trump administration plans to fight back against the ruling. The city said it plans on having more information on the ruling at a later date.