Transportation
California Sues Trump Administration to Recover High-Speed Rail Funding
The complaint alleges the decision to terminate the pair of federal grants was solely politically based.
Photo courtesy California High-Speed Rail
California wasted little time in responding to the federal government’s pulling of $4 billion in grants for the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s (CHSRA) 171-mile project by suing the Trump administration in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.
On July 16, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) rescinded two grants—a $928-million grant awarded in 2010, and a $3.1-billion grant awarded in 2024—with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy calling the $35-billion project a “boondoggle.” Governor Gavin Newsom responded on July 17 by announcing that the CHSRA would sue the government, calling the termination of federal grants politically motivated.
That lawsuit came later that day in the form of a 35-page complaint filed by Attorney General Rob Bonta challenging the legal basis for the termination of the project’s grant funding. The lawsuit seeks “declaratory and injunctive relief,” claiming that President Donald Trump "has long expressed personal animus toward the California high-speed rail program” and that the termination was politically motivated.
The lawsuit asks the court to vacate and set aside FRA’s termination actions and stop the funds in question from being allocated to other projects.
The FRA first alerted the state it was planning to pull the grants in June, basing the decision on the findings of a 300-page report by the agency outlining a host of issues with the project. The CHRSA sent an initial response to the accusations on June 11 and a formal response to the report's findings on July 7.
In the response to the FRA, CHSRA Chief Executive Officer Ian Choudri called Duffy’s view of the project a “misrepresentation of the facts” and stated that the FRA “wholly fails to support its conclusion that the authority is unable to deliver the [project] and commence revenue operations by 2033.”
The final decision from the FRA didn’t change, with the federal government calling the project a “waste for years” with “over a decade of failures” that has caused what was originally billed as an 800-mile, $33-billion project to turn into a 171-mile, $35-billion project now $7 billion underfunded.
The state countered in the letters that the project is well on track and scheduled to begin revenue passenger services to 119 miles of track in the Central Valley by 2033.
The lawsuit by the CHRSA challenges the legal basis for the termination of the project’s grant funding, claiming it was made on political grounds. “Trump’s termination of federal grants for California high-speed rail reeks of politics,” Newsom said in a statement. “It’s yet another political stunt to punish California. In reality, this is just a heartless attack on the Central Valley that will put real jobs and livelihoods on the line.”
In the lawsuit, the CHSRA mimics much of what it wrote in its July 7 response letter, adding that the “sudden decision to terminate” the agreements was “arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to law, and threatens to wreak significant economic damage on the Central Valley, the state and the nation.”
Duffy disagrees. “Federal dollars are not a blank check—they come with a promise to deliver results,” he said in a statement before the lawsuit. “After over a decade of failures, CHSRA’s mismanagement and incompetence has proven it cannot build its train to nowhere on time or on budget.”
