A second federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency unlawfully canceled roughly $7 billion in solar grants, according to a report carried by Ukraine's Mezha news outlet citing the decision.

The ruling marks the second time a federal court has found the agency's termination of the grant awards ran afoul of the law. It lands the EPA back in the same procedural territory it occupied after the first ruling: a multibillion-dollar clean-energy funding stream that the courts say was pulled improperly, and that the agency must now defend or unwind through legitimate channels.

For the recipients — organizations that had committed capital, staffing and project schedules against awarded federal dollars — the decision is a signal that the cancellations cannot simply stand as unilateral administrative acts. Grant programs of this scale typically anchor project pipelines: procurement contracts, installation timelines, workforce commitments and, in some cases, financing arrangements that assume the federal share arrives on schedule. When an agency terminates awards outside the procedures that govern them, it is those downstream commitments that absorb the shock first.

The $7 billion at stake represents one of the larger federal funding pools for solar deployment administered through the EPA. A second adverse ruling raises the practical question of what the agency does next: appeal, comply and reinstate the awards, or attempt a lawfully grounded termination that would satisfy the courts' procedural objections.

Each path carries a timeline. An appeal stretches the uncertainty for grantees for months or longer. Compliance would require the agency to resume obligations on the awards — moving money back into the pipeline it drained. A redo of the termination decision, executed through proper procedures, would still leave the program's fate contested on the merits rather than on process.

What to watch now is the EPA's next filing deadline in the cases and whether the agency seeks a stay pending appeal. Those procedural dates, not statements of intent, will determine whether the $7 billion stays frozen or flows back to the awarded projects.