Green Energy — News & Analysis

Court permanently blocks NEVI freeze as DOT proposes impossible domestic content rules (February 10, 2026)

February 10, 2026 — In State of Washington v. U.S. Department of Transportation, U.S. District Court Judge Tana Lin issued a final judgment on January 23, 2026 permanently barring the DOT from withdrawing states' NEVI funds, canceling their implementation plans, or otherwise interfering with the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program — ruling that the administration's abrupt February 2025 freeze had violated federal law. The case was brought by 17 states led by Washington, Colorado, and California. Rather than comply with the order's spirit, the DOT weeks later proposed a new rule that would dramatically raise the domestic content requirement for EV charging station components from 55 to 100 percent — a threshold the industry said no U.S. supply chain could currently meet.

The Sierra Club, which led a coalition of environmental groups in the case, called the 100 percent domestic content proposal "another veiled attempt" to obstruct the program through impossible compliance burdens. The NEVI program had been designed as a bipartisan infrastructure initiative with overwhelming congressional support, premised on building a reliable charging network along Interstate highways to support EV adoption across the country. The administration's serial obstruction — freeze, court reversal, new impossible requirement — was characterized by critics as a war of attrition against a Congressionally mandated program the executive branch lacked the legal authority to simply cancel.

The legal battle over NEVI ran parallel to similar fights over $2.5 billion in the CFI program and other charging infrastructure funding streams. As of early 2026, states had been effectively blocked from building out highway charging networks for a full year, despite court rulings in their favor. The U.S. ranked behind China, Norway, the Netherlands, and other nations in public charging density, and analysts warned the infrastructure gap would become a lasting drag on domestic EV adoption and competitiveness.