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The Chicago Transit Authority filed a federal lawsuit seeking restoration of $2 billion in commuter rail expansion funding that the Trump administration stopped last fall, setting up a new dispute over how federal transit money is awarded and monitored. The CTA says the administration halted the funding in an effort to restrict race- and gender-based contracting and that the move violates the Constitution.
The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, argues that the administration acted “arbitrarily” when it stopped transit construction funds. The suit contends the rule changes were designed to target race- and gender-based contracting preferences, and it says the federal government has provided no adequate justification for the interruption.
CTA Acting President Nora Leerhsen said in a statement that the agency is committed to moving the projects forward. She called the Red Line extension “a historic investment into the far South Side of Chicago that will transform public transit and create new economic opportunity for the communities it will serve.”
The CTA says the funding hold affects two Chicago areas in particular. One is a 5.3-mile (8.5 kilometer) extension of the Red Line that would add four train stops intended to reach an additional 100,000 residents in disadvantaged, largely Black neighborhoods. The other is ongoing work on the North Side that replaces century-old rails and builds four new accessible stations, the CTA said.
According to the lawsuit, the Trump administration issued a new rule in September removing race- and gender-based contracting preferences, and then applied that rule retroactively to grants for Chicago and New York. The CTA says the grant funding was paused on Oct. 3, 2025, after which the CTA provided requested documentation a few weeks later.
The lawsuit says the Transportation Department requested additional records in December and that since the CTA responded, there has been no further communication from the department. It describes the holdup as penalizing the CTA for complying with the contracting rules in place at the time the work was approved, while other projects nationwide that were following the same rules did not face similar funding interruptions.
In its response, the U.S. Department of Transportation said it is seeking to end what it described as “discriminatory” and “illegal” contracting practices. In an email cited in the lawsuit, the department said it will fight “discriminatory, illegal, and wasteful contracting practices,” adding that “The American people don’t care what race or gender construction workers, pipefitters, or electricians are,” and that they want the projects built “quickly and efficiently.”
The Chicago case comes days after New York authorities filed their own lawsuit seeking resumption of similar federal transit funding in the amount of $60 million.