California joined 15 other states in a federal lawsuit Wednesday seeking to force the Trump administration to release billions of dollars for electric vehicle chargers approved in a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law former President Joe Biden signed in 2021.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the lawsuit at a news conference at an electric vehicle charging station in Burlingame.

“The President continues his unconstitutional attempts to withhold funding that Congress appropriated to programs he dislikes,” Bonta said in a statement. “This time he’s illegally stripping away billions of dollars for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, all to line the pockets of his Big Oil friends.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

According to Bonta, a Democrat who has pledged to challenge President Donald Trump in court every time the Republican steps outside the law, California expected to receive $300 million for the construction of charging stations through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program. That’s a component of Biden’s 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Trump’s administration has refused to release the funds, Bonta said.

The lawsuit — the 19th legal challenge California has filed against Trump’s federal government — argues that the Federal Highway Administration is shirking its legal responsibility to allocate the funds that were approved by Congress.

“President Trump’s illegal action withholding funds for electric vehicle infrastructure is yet another Trump gift to China — ceding American innovation and killing thousands of jobs,” Gov. Gavin Newsom, also a Democrat, said in a statement.

The other states that have joined the lawsuit are Washington, Colorado, Arizona, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Vermont. The District of Columbia also joined the lawsuit.

Trump is a staunch proponent of fossil fuels who denies that human activity is changing the climate. He took aim at electric vehicles while campaigning for a second term, setting the stage for fights with California, a state that’s embraced zero-emission vehicles and sets strong air pollution regulations for gas-powered cars.

“They don’t go far. They cost a fortune,” Trump said of electric cars during a rally in Iowa in 2023. “You’re in the middle of the desert and you say, ‘You know what, we’re running low on electric. Do they have a charger around anywhere?’”

On the first day of his second term in office, Trump signed an executive order intended to “unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources” by eliminating or pausing climate policies passed by Congress under Biden’s leadership.

That order paused the allocation of all funds that were set to be released by the infrastructure law as well as Biden’s landmark climate bill, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which was projected to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions about 40% by the end of the decade. The order specifically paused disbursements to states made through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program.

California’s legal challenge comes as the state makes “a great deal of progress” in promoting electric cars and building chargers, said David Hochschild, chair of the California Energy Commission.

About 1.3 million electric cars were registered in the state as of September — about a million more than the totals in each of the next-most states of Florida and Texas, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Meanwhile, the number of charging stations recently surpassed the number of gasoline pumps in the state, Hochschild said at the news conference in Burlingame.

Though California is the center of the electric vehicle market in the U.S., Hochschild noted that competitors abroad are leaping ahead. About 45% of new car sales in China are electric, and that figure jumps to 95% in Norway, he said. Hochschild said it’ll take continued federal investment to get there, an unlikely prospect during a Trump White House.

“It’s just imperative that we finish the job, and that requires that partnership,” he said.

This latest lawsuit comes after Bonta on Monday filed lawsuits against the Trump administration alongside other states over a federal halt on wind power development and recent layoffs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

So far, California has won injunctions on other federal policies since Trump took office, including layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education and research funding cuts to universities.