Denver this week sued the Trump administration over its threat to withhold as much as $600 million in federal transportation funding if the city refuses to align its politics with the president’s stances on issues of immigration and diversity.

Denver joined nearly three dozen other cities and counties in the 105-page lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

The cities and counties take issue with U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s April memo that warned local jurisdictions they could lose access to federal transportation funding if they do not comply with the Trump administration’s positions on both immigration enforcement and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Any program or policy “designed to achieve so-called ‘diversity, equity and inclusion,’ or ‘DEI,’ goals, presumptively violates federal law,” Duffy warned in the memo. Localities receiving federal funds must also fully cooperate with federal immigration enforcement or risk losing the money, he wrote.

The cities and counties that sued argue the new federal conditions on awarding the funding are unconstitutional and that the Trump administration does not have the authority to set conditions beyond what Congress has established.

“The Trump administration is willfully breaking the law and, in ignoring the separation of powers between Congress and the White House, violating the bedrock constitutional foundation on which our country was built,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said in a statement Friday.

Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure is the recipient of about $300 million in federal funding, while Denver International Airport received about $310 million between the 2022 and 2024 fiscal years, according to the mayor’s office.

The airport is expected to be eligible for an additional $267 million in grants from 2025 to 2028, a city spokesman said in a news release.

Across the almost three dozen cities and counties that are suing — including San Francisco, New York, Boston, Seattle, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and Nashville, Tennessee — almost $4 billion in awarded or soon-to-be awarded federal funding is at risk, the lawsuit alleges.

“Allowing the unlawful grant conditions to stand would negatively impact Plaintiffs’ committed budgets, force reductions in their workforce, and undermine their ability to determine for themselves how to meet their communities’ unique needs,” the lawsuit says.

The effort is Denver’s second lawsuit this month against the Trump administration. The city last week joined a lawsuit with Chicago after the Federal Emergency Management Agency refused to pay Denver $24 million in previously awarded grant money.

Additionally, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Denver and Colorado earlier in May over state and local laws that limit how much local police can cooperate with federal immigration officials.

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Originally Published: May 23, 2025 at 1:14 PM MDT

DENVER — In November 2022, 70% of Denver voters approved the Waste No More ballot initiative to require city apartment buildings, businesses and large events to provide recycling and composting services. It would also establish new recycling and composting requirements for large events and construction and demolition sites.

Two years later, enforcement is still on hold as the city works on how to put the ordinance into action.

Earlier this month, Denver7 spoke with city leaders about that process.

“Those big systems changes also come with complications,” said Jonathan Wachtel, deputy executive director for the Denver Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency. “They come with costs.”

“You can have a climate-friendly city and a business-friendly city at the same time, and we’ve been very thoughtful about how we’ve approached it,” said Tim Hoffman, director of policy for Mayor Mike Johnston’s office.

Hoffman added that he “completely” understands the frustration some have with the ordinance not being implemented more than two years after passing.

Brian Loma, an environmental advocate and one of the original proponents of the ordinance, is feeling that frustration. He said Denver is “lagging behind” other Colorado cities that are implementing their own Zero Waste policies.

“The intent was for Denver to be the leader, the largest city in the state of Colorado doing the hard work to show everybody else it can be done,” he said Wednesday. “It’s a matter of civic pride.”

After discussions with advocates and the business community, the city is now proposing exceptions to the ordinance.

“Making sure that we weren’t putting undue burdens on small businesses, small restaurants, small events,” said Hoffman.

For example, restaurants with 25 or fewer employees who made $2 million or less in revenue the previous year would be exempt from the composting requirement. Loma said that should not be an excuse.

“My business doesn’t do $100,000 a year, and I compost and recycle as much as humanly possible,” he said. “It’s not about how much business you do. It’s about how much waste you produce.”

In their own waste management ordinances, cities like Boulder and Longmont have exemptions for businesses facing “economic hardship” situations. Longmont specifically spells out an exemption for businesses whose losses from the prior fiscal year were more than 10 percent of gross sales.

But Loma said an exemption solely based on profits and employee count would be unique and unnecessary.

“The point of Waste No More was to get people to talk about their waste plans,” he said. “Create a plan on how to divert and then look at what the costs are and determine if that would be a hardship or not, not to carve out and just say a whole bunch of people are exempt before you even come up with a plan.”

That being said, Loma clarified that he and the other originators of the ballot measure want to discuss and meet somewhere in the middle with city leaders.

On Wednesday, Denver City Council’s business committee pushed the next conversation to July, but with a sense of urgency.

“There’s been so much work done and I don’t want the policy to flounder or to take more time when we need to get this implemented in, because stuff is going into the landfill as we speak,” Denver City Councilmember Stacie Gilmore said during Wednesday’s committee meeting.

Ordinance enforcement is slated to begin in April 2026, but city leaders suggested during the meeting that further delays in finalizing exemptions would put that timeline in jeopardy.

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