Editor’s note: Story updated at 5:17 p.m. on 9/22/2026 to include comment from the City of Bellingham.
BELLINGHAM, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – Bellingham has joined a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration over conditions it claims are illegally being attached to grant funds.
The city filed the suit alongside other regional municipalities on Monday, Sept. 14. The suit names 11 agencies as defendants including the Justice Department, FEMA, Homeland Security and the EPA.
King, Kitsap, Snohomish and Thurston counties filed the suit with Bellingham, along with the City of Bremerton and the Port of Seattle.
The municipalities argue the agencies can’t override Congress’s dispersal of federal grants by forcing recipients to comply with new conditions that follow President Trump’s political agenda.
According to court documents, those conditions include banning DEI initiatives, facilitating federal immigration enforcement, limiting support to education agencies with COVID-19 vaccination requirements and more.
The group says the attempts to repurpose those federal grant programs threaten more than $87 million in funds that have already been awarded or are expected to be awarded to them.
Bellingham expects to have over $500,000 in grants from the DOJ between 2025 and 2026, along with about $6,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Court documents state the DOJ funds would help bring back the Bellingham Police Department’s Motorcycle Traffic Unit and finance new technology to better analyze crime scene evidence, among other uses.
But the city hasn’t signed some of the grant agreements due to the aforementioned conditions it’s challenging.
“Federal funding that Congress already approved should not come with a hidden price tag,” Bellingham Mayor Kim Lund said in an emailed statement to My Bellingham Now. “Our community relies on these dollars for public safety, housing, environmental protection, and other essential services — funding we’ve earned by meeting every condition Congress set. Bellingham stands with our regional partners in defending the community’s right to the resources it was promised, and we will keep fighting any attempt to use federal funding as leverage against local values.”
Bellingham is already a plaintiff in two other lawsuits over federal grant funding, one which involves the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation and another that involves the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA.
The latest suit was first reported by the Bellingham Herald.
