The states of New York and New Jersey filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday night, seeking to force the feds to immediately release funding they froze for the Gateway project before work on the new rail tunnel grinds to a halt on Friday.
It was the second such legal action this week. The new lawsuit follows a separate suit brought by the Gateway Development Commission (GDC), the entity in charge of the project, in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on Monday night.
The $16 billion Gateway Tunnel project would replace a 116-year-old train tunnel that serves 200,000 commuters between New York and New Jersey each weekday. The two tubes, which carries Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains, are crumbling after a century-plus of use and severe damage from 2012’s Superstorm Sandy.
New York and New Jersey Attorneys General Letitia James and Jennifer Davenport, respectively, filed the states’ Feb. 3 lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, contending that pausing work on Gateway due to a lack of funding will cause immediate harm to both states. The feds paused the funding in October, at the beginning of the last government shutdown, over the project allegedly being out of compliance with its revised diversity, equity, and inclusion rules.
The suit echoed project officials’ concerns that a work stoppage would result in immediate job losses, ballooning project costs, and prolong the use of deteriorating train tubes in danger of shutting down.
“Allowing this project to stop would put one of the country’s most heavily used transit corridors at risk,” James said in a statement. “Our tunnels are already under strain and losing this project could be disastrous for commuters, workers, and our regional economy. We are taking the administration to court to prevent a shutdown that would ripple far beyond New York and New Jersey.”
The attorneys general asked the court for an immediate stay to restore the funding so that construction on the project will not have to cease on Feb. 6.
Its central argument is that the Trump administration’s funding freeze is illegal because it was motivated by political retribution against the president’s Democratic rivals rather than a legitimate compliance issue. In contrast, GDC alleged that the federal government violated a contract it signed with the commission under former President Biden’s administration.
The attorneys general argue that President Trump’s social media posts on his Truth Social platform in the days following the funding freeze, in which he cast the action as retribution against Democratic U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, show that the action violated the “Administrative Procedure Act.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) said it withheld the funds to review the project’s compliance with its newly changed rules on contracting with minority- and women-owned businesses.
“It is evident from the president’s and White House’s statements, as well as the timing and manner of DOT’s ultimate suspension of funding, that this action was a politically motivated attempt to punish and coerce those with whom the President disagrees,” the suit reads.
The White House has claimed it is Congressional Democrats, led by Schumer, who are actually standing in the way of the funding being restored.
