Federal court ruling helps Wisconsin preserve $62M in federal EV funding

A court fight with the Trump administration over a congressionally-approved electric vehicle charging program may be coming to an end.

This week, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul announced that a multi-state coalition secured a victory against the administration’s efforts to block billions of dollars in funds for electric vehicle charging stations. 

Wisconsin had been awarded more than $78 million by the Biden administration to deploy a network of electric vehicle fast-chargers across the state. The funding for EV chargers was included in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Had the Trump administration been successful, it could have cost Wisconsin more than $62 million in federal funds, as well as jobs and economic activity tied to EV charging station projects, according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice.

A summary judgment in federal court last week concluded that the administration violated the law in trying to block the funding.

“This ruling safeguards tens of millions of dollars for projects in Wisconsin against the Trump administration’s unlawful attack on this program,” state Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a statement. “This outcome is good for jobs and clean air in Wisconsin.”

A prior court ruling last summer allowed the state to move forward with distributing EV charging funds while the case played out in court, according to the state Department of Justice.

That ruling allowed Gov. Tony Evers and the state Department of Transportation to award $14 million in EV charging grants to 26 projects across the state in November 2025. In 2024, Wisconsin awarded $22.4 million for more than 50 EV charging projects.

“That kind of preliminary relief is considered extraordinary relief — courts don’t grant it easily,” Kaul told WPR on Thursday. “But here, where there was a blatant violation of the law and there was harm to Wisconsin and other states from that action, we were able to persuade the judge to grant that preliminary relief.”

The summary judgment allows the state’s program to continue distributing federal funding for EV charging stations, the attorney general said.

In an email, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation said the agency continues to administer the EV charging program with the federal funding allotted to Wisconsin and that nothing has changed at the agency level since the awards were announced in November.

Kaul said the Trump administration could appeal the most recent court ruling and that “there are often appeals following rulings like this.”

“That being said, the law is clearly on our side in this case,” he said. “What the Trump administration did violates the law. … It’s my hope that they will recognize that their actions here were clearly unlawful, and that filing an appeal would be unsuccessful.” 

He said the administration’s job as the executive branch is to faithfully execute the laws of the United States, so withholding congressionally-approved federal funds is “blatantly unconstitutional.” 

The administration could ask Congress to change the law and sign legislation repealing the law if the president disagrees with the EV charging program, he said.

U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, R-De Pere, introduced a bill last year to repeal the EV charging program, but there’s been no action on the legislation since last February. Companion legislation in the U.S. Senate has similarly failed to advance over the last year.