New Jersey and New York have filed a lawsuit against the federal government over its decision to withhold billions of dollars in funding allocated for the Gateway Tunnel project.
The project would create new tunnels and railway crossings connecting New York and New Jersey through the Hudson River, a massive commuting thoroughfare for people traveling in and out of Manhattan. President Donald Trump has repeatedly clashed with the northeastern states over funding for the project since his first term, with the administration putting the funding on ice during the October government shutdown.
The two states filed the lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday in the Southern District of New York. Attorneys General Jennifer Davenport of New Jersey and Letitia James of New York are seeking emergency relief to lift the Transportation Department‘s funding freeze on the project.
“Suspending the funding for this monumental project based on the President’s desire to punish political rivals violates the Administrative Procedure Act many times over. In this Complaint, Plaintiffs New Jersey and New York ask the Court to stay, vacate, declare unlawful, and enjoin the September 30 decision to suspend federal funding for the Project,” the complaint reads.
In the complaint, they pointed to a statement Trump made in October in which he said he was freezing the project funding championed by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
“We’re cutting a $20 billion project that Schumer fought for 15 years to get, and I’m cutting the project. The project is gonna be dead. It’s just pretty much dead right now,” Trump said in October.
“New Jersey will not back down from this fight,” Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) said in a statement. “If this project stops, 1,000 workers will immediately lose their jobs and hundreds of thousands of commuters will lose the chance at finally having reliable train service that makes their lives easier.”
The Transportation Department announced in October that the funding would be put on pause as the department conducted an administrative review of the project to ensure compliance with a rule “barring race- and sex-based contracting requirements from federal grants.”
“Secretary Duffy’s position on the [Disadvantaged Business Enterprise] program is clear – subsidizing infrastructure contracts with taxpayer dollars based on discriminatory principles is unconstitutional, counter to civil rights laws, and a waste of taxpayer resources,” the Transportation Department said in an October statement.
The states’s lawsuit comes just one day after the Gateway Development Commission, the group in charge of the project, filed a separate breach of contract lawsuit against the federal government to release the frozen funds.
“As this lawsuit makes clear, President Trump has illegally frozen congressionally appropriated and contractually obligated funding for Gateway,” Schumer said in a Monday statement. “This lawsuit would be unnecessary if President Trump did the right thing for New York and New Jersey and lifted his arbitrary freeze.”
