23 Attorneys General Ask EPA To Defund Climate Lawfare Group

The attorneys general of 23 states sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Tuesday, requesting the agency to cancel any grants to the Environmental Law Institute (ELI). The objections to federal grants for ELI focus on its Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), which the attorneys claim “lobb[ies] judges in order to make climate change policy through the courts.”

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who is leading the coalition, stated, “The Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project is using woke climate propaganda, under the guise of what they call ‘neutral’ education, to persuade judges and push their wildly unpopular agenda through the court system.” The letter also referenced hundreds of other “environmental justice” grants that were canceled during the Trump administration, urging the EPA to stop funding the CJP.

The CJP asserts that it “provides judges with authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law.” Since its inception in 2018, the project claims to have educated over 2,000 judges.

However, the letter disputes the CJP’s claims of neutrality, citing allegations that individuals developing training materials for judges are also involved in climate litigation. A report from the American Energy Institute identified several contributors to the CJP’s curriculum who have participated in legal climate activism.

Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, supported this view in his testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee in June. He stated, “These trainings attempt to influence the very judges who are hearing these cases, using a curriculum developed in part by individuals assisting with that litigation.”

The attorneys general also raised consumer protection concerns, suggesting that ELI misrepresents its trainings as “objective.”

In response, the ELI contended that federal grants do not directly fund the CJP and that the project is not “radical.” The organization stated, “CJP is not funded by government sources and EPA’s grants to ELI are not related to judicial education. For over 30 years, ELI has partnered with the EPA and supported its efforts to provide Americans clean air and water.”

Despite this, the letter highlighted that a significant portion of ELI’s revenue comes from EPA awards, accounting for approximately 13 percent in 2023 and 8.4 percent in 2024, according to ELI’s financial data.

Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has also expressed concerns regarding what he described as “political indoctrination” of judges, specifically mentioning CJP and ELI during a Senate subcommittee hearing on June 25. He characterized it as part of a “three-pronged assault” on American energy independence, which includes foreign funding and mass litigation.