23 Attorneys General Ask EPA To Defund Climate Lawfare Group
A coalition of 23 state attorneys general, led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, has urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop funding the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) due to concerns over it’s Climate Judiciary Project (CJP). They claim the CJP uses biased climate advocacy disguised as neutral education to influence judges and shape climate policy through the courts. The attorneys general allege conflicts of interest, noting that some involved in creating the CJP’s curriculum are active in climate-related litigation.They also raised consumer protection issues, accusing the ELI of falsely portraying its training as objective. The ELI denied that EPA grants fund the CJP or that the project is radical, emphasizing a long history of partnership with the EPA on environmental efforts. Nonetheless, financial reports reveal that EPA grants constitute a notable part of ELI’s revenue. Senator ted Cruz has publicly criticized the CJP, framing it as part of a broader attempt to politicize the judiciary and undermine American energy independence.
The attorneys general of 23 states sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Tuesday, asking that the agency cancel any grants to the Environmental Law Institute (ELI). The attorneys’ objections to federal grants for the ELI center on its Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), which they claim “lobb[ies] judges in order to make climate change policy through the courts.”
“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,” said Attorney General Knudsen, R-Mont., in a statement announcing the letter. Knudsen is leading the coalition of attorneys general seeking to end federal funding of the climate activist group. The letter recalled hundreds of other “environmental justice” grants already canceled under the Trump administration and called on the EPA to cease its funding of the policy group as long as it is sponsoring the CJP.
The CJP says 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.” The project claims it has educated more than 2,000 participating judges since it was started in 2018.
The letter refutes CJP’s claims of being a neutral educational resource, however, noting allegations that the same people developing training materials for judges are involved in climate “justice” litigation themselves. A report from the American Energy Institute named several people involved in either advising on or actually writing the CJP’s curriculum who have been involved in legal climate activism.
Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center, echoed this assessment in his written testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee Delivering on Government Efficiency in June. “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,” Walter wrote.
In the letter, the attorneys general also posed consumer protection concerns, suggesting that the ELI is falsely representing its trainings as “objective.”
In a comment to The Federalist, the ELI pushed back on the idea that the federal grants have a direct link to the CJP or that the project is “radical.”
“CJP is not funded by government sources and EPA’s grants to ELI are not related to judicial education,” the ELI argued. “For over 30 years, ELI has partnered with the EPA and supported its efforts to provide Americans clean air and water. “
Still, the letter notes that significant portions of the ELI’s revenue as an organization come from EPA awards (approximately 13 percent in 2023 and 8.4 percent in 2024), as reported in ELI’s own financial data.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, opposed what he implied was “political indoctrination” of judges, specifically naming CJP and the ELI in a Senate subcommittee hearing on June 25. He described it as one in a “three-pronged assault,” along with “foreign funding and mass litigation,” to undermine “American energy independence,” as The Federalist previously reported.
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