The Trump administration cannot withhold federal transportation funding from states — including Maryland — that do not comply with the federal government’s mass deportation efforts, according to a new court ruling.
A federal judge in Rhode Island issued a permanent injunction against the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) last week, ruling the department “blatantly overstepped their statutory authority” when trying to tie transportation dollars to immigration enforcement.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown joined a coalition of other states in filing the lawsuit in May and was granted a preliminary injunction in June while the court made its final decision.
The multistate litigation was filed after USDOT Secretary Sean Duffy sent a letter in April to states applying for transportation grant funding, noting the department “expects its recipients to comply with Federal law enforcement directives and to cooperate with Federal officials in the enforcement of Federal immigration law.”
Maryland receives close to $1 billion annually in federal transportation funding to support and maintain roads, highways, railways, airways and bridges.
“This ruling ensures transportation funding stays focused on transportation, not on advancing a political agenda,” Brown said in a statement.
While the preliminary injunction was granted fairly quickly, Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) Senior Policy Advisor Sean Winkler explains the uncertainty within federal grant distribution has not been easy.
“If there was more lag time between the [new] terms and when the injunction was originally announced, I think there would've been more dramatic impacts. But I will just share, it was a very challenging time internally for us,” Winkler said.
Upon taking office in January, the Trump administration froze close to 3,200 infrastructure projects awarded under the Biden administration for a “departmental review,” which Winkler says MDOT continues to monitor.
As of June, Duffy announced USDOT has cleared nearly one-third of those projects — worth around $10 billion — and removed what the department refers to as “leftist requirements,” including Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), environmental justice and climate change reduction obligations.
These thousands of discretionary grants are not the only federal infrastructure funding concerns for Maryland.
Just over two weeks after the start of the ongoing federal government shutdown, U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Russel Vought announced via X — formerly Twitter — that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would be pausing “over $11 billion in lower-priority projects and considering them for cancellation.”
Vought directly listed Maryland as one of the states that would be impacted, but did not release any details about which infrastructure projects could be halted.
Last week, all Democratic members of Maryland’s federal delegation sent a letter to Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle, requesting answers on which projects would be affected.
“We respectfully request that you immediately provide our offices with a list of projects from the Army Corps’ Baltimore District that to date have been impacted by this announcement, whether any of these projects that were paused have been resumed, how long the projects have been paused and the amount of funding impacted by the pause of each project,” the letter concludes, asking for answers no later than Wednesday, Nov. 12.
Winkler explains the Corps general provides the majority of funding for these types of projects but are required to have a public agency sponsor to provide some level of a state and local funding match.
“The Maryland Port Administration is often for those projects the local public agency supporter of those,” Winkler said. “So while we do not direct them, we certainly provide financial contribution as we see them promoting obviously port operations and the economic competitiveness of the state.”
The Corps is currently carrying out wastewater infrastructure projects addressing needs in Western Maryland, flood risk management projects on the state’s coast and navigation projects to support the Port of Baltimore and interstate commerce.
