GGRF Litigation and the Future of Federal Climate Funding: Grant Terminations, Impoundment, and Client Remedies

Kristin E. Niver, Counsel | Robinson & Cole

Kristin E. Niver is Counsel at Robinson & Cole, practicing real estate finance with a career-long concentration on affordable housing, impact finance, and community development transactions. Her clean energy practice sits inside the program at issue in this class: she represents subrecipients of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants that are building green loan programs to finance clean energy improvements to multifamily housing projects nationwide. She also advises nonprofits, CDFI lenders, and green banks on investment tax credit structures, including bridge financing for direct pay tax credit transfers. She practices from the firm’s New York and Washington, D.C. offices.

• Education & Credentials

Kristin earned her Juris Doctor at the University of California, Los Angeles – School of Law, where she was the Howard & Irene Levine Distinguished Fellow in Affordable Housing at the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate and took part in the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law & Policy, concentrating in affordable housing. She holds a master’s degree (M.U.P.) in urban planning from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, awarded jointly with an M.S.W., and an A.B. with honors from the University of Chicago. She is admitted to practice in the State of New York and the District of Columbia.

• Recognition & Leadership

Kristin has been selected by her peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Real Estate Law since 2023. She was a finalist for “Heroine in Real Estate and Construction” as part of the March of Dimes 2025 Heroines of Washington and received the Bisnow DMV Women Leading Real Estate Rising Star Award in 2024. The New York Real Estate Journal featured her in its 2025 “Ones to Watch – Rising Stars” spotlight.

In organized bar leadership, she was elected Chair of the American Bar Association Section of Real Property, Trust & Estate Law’s Commercial Real Estate Transactions Group for a two-year term effective September 1, 2025, having served as the group’s Vice Chair from 2023 to 2025. She has chaired the same Section’s Affordable Housing Committee since 2019. She joined the Board of Directors of the New York State Association for Affordable Housing in April 2025.

• Professional Involvement

Kristin serves on the steering committee of the Women’s Leadership Initiative of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Washington and co-chairs the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee of the District of Columbia Building Industry Association. She sits on the Programs Committee of Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) D.C., leads the Building Electrification Task Force of Advanced Energy Group (AEG) DMV, and is a member of the D.C. Real Estate Group. She has served as Digest Editor of the Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development Law, published by the ABA Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law, since 2015, and is a regional ambassador for the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation. Her community service includes the Advisory Council of Jubilee Housing and the Youth & Real Estate Event Committee of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Washington.

She writes and speaks regularly on the finance side of the energy transition. Her publications include a co-authored article, “The Next Era of Commercial Real Estate Finance and Lending,” in Probate & Property (July/August 2025); “Supercharging Office to Housing Conversions,” in the ABA Section of Real Property, Trust and Estate Law eReport (Spring 2024); and “Changing the Face of Urban America: Assessing the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit,” 102 Va. L. Rev. Online 48 (2016). Recent presentations include “Solar Financing for Affordable Housing After OBBBA: ITC Bridge Loans, Tax Credit Monetization, Capital Stack Design” (BARBRI, June 2026), “Leading Through Uncertainty: The CDFI Counsel Perspective” (ABA Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development 35th Annual Conference, May 2026), and “Impact Fund Workouts: Clean Energy, Affordable Housing, and Mission-Aligned Restructurings” (myLawCLE, May 2026).

• Experience

Kristin brings more than a decade of legal experience representing banks, insurance companies, and debt funds in construction and permanent loans, debt restructurings, and secondary market transactions, with particular depth in community development lending and impact finance syndications. She has an extensive background in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and New Markets Tax Credit transactions, having represented market-leading banks as well as premier low-income housing tax credit syndicators in the syndication of those credits. Her clean energy work includes representing Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund subrecipients standing up national green loan programs for multifamily clean energy improvements, and structuring investment tax credit transactions for nonprofits, CDFI lenders, and green banks. She also represents for-profit and nonprofit developers in acquisitions, dispositions, and joint ventures, and works on the programmatic and policy questions that sit behind affordable housing capital. Before entering practice, she worked as an urban planner specializing in affordable housing and policy.

David A. Super, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Economics | Georgetown University Law Center

David A. Super is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Economics at Georgetown University Law Center. His research centers on administrative law, constitutional law, legislation including the federal budget, local government law, and public welfare law, and his listed areas of expertise include budget and appropriations law, administrative law, constitutional law, legislation, and taxation. He came to the academy from the advocacy side of federal budget and benefits practice, and he writes and comments publicly on federal spending authority, including a June 2026 Balkinization series on the power of the purse and shifts in that power within Congress and the executive branch.

• Education & Credentials

Professor Super holds an A.B. from Princeton University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He teaches at Georgetown as the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Economics, with related courses in Evidence and Property.

• Recognition & Leadership

Professor Super received the Frank F. Flegal Excellence in Teaching Award in 2018. He is a regularly sought commentator on federal funding and agency authority questions: he was featured in Reuters’ June 5, 2026 report on the U.S. Supreme Court backing federal regulators in cases involving the FCC and SEC, and in the Washingtonian’s June 5, 2026 piece examining whether the Kennedy Center was already defying a court order. He authored the Balkinization series “The Power of the Purse,” including installments on shifts in power within Congress (June 4, 2026) and within the executive branch (June 5, 2026).

• Professional Involvement

In addition to Georgetown, Professor Super has taught law at Columbia, Harvard, Howard, Maryland, Penn, Washington & Lee, and Yale. Alongside his core subjects, he teaches Civil Procedure, Contracts, Evidence, Property, and Torts.

His scholarship includes “Community, Society, and Individualism in Constitutional Law,” 111 Geo. L.J. 761 (2023); “Acute Poverty: The Fatal Flaw in U.S. Anti-Poverty Law,” 10 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. 1273 (2020); “The Future of U.S. Immigration Law,” 53 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 509 (2019); and “Temporal Equal Protection,” 98 N.C. L. Rev. 59 (2019). He also contributed “States’ Evolving Role in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program” to Holes in the Safety Net: Federalism and Poverty (Ezra Rosser ed., Cambridge University Press 2019).

• Experience

Before entering the legal academy, Professor Super served for several years as the general counsel for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where his work centered on federal budget and appropriations questions and the programs they fund. He also worked for the National Health Law Program and for Community Legal Services in Philadelphia. That background pairs direct experience with the federal budget process alongside his scholarly work on administrative law, appropriations, and the constitutional structure of the spending power.

SESSION 1 – The GGRF, the Current Disputes, and the Theories Challenging Termination | 1:00pm – 2:00pm

This CLE webinar will examine the ongoing Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) litigation, and the broader implications of federal climate funding freezes and grant terminations. Our authoritative panel will explain the GGRF’s structure, the current disputes involving the EPA, Citibank, and grant recipients, and the legal theories brought to challenge the suspension or termination of congressionally authorized climate funding.

BREAK | 2:00pm – 2:10pm

SESSION 2 – Public Law Doctrines, Remedies, and Counseling Affected Clients | 2:10pm – 3:10pm

Although rooted in federal climate funding, the GGRF litigation presents issues beyond environmental law, including agency authority, federal grant rights, appropriations limits, and available remedies. The panel will discuss the litigation’s grounding within administrative law, appropriations and impoundment issues, the associated constitutional arguments, the impact of federal grant rules, and the challenges related to jurisdiction, sovereign immunity, and the practical limits to any remedies. The panel will navigate the resulting concerns for grantees, subrecipients, lenders, and others who may rely on federal climate funding. Listen as our panel discusses the GGRF litigation, the public law and funding doctrines behind the cases, and possibilities for preserving rights and counseling affected clients.