Twenty-three state attorneys general are urging Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin to defund a climate law group called the Environmental Law Institute (ELI).
The letter was sent to Zeldin on Tuesday from 23 GOP state officials, with Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen leading the effort, joined by state AGs from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
In the letter, the AGs noted that “ELI received approximately 13% of its revenue in 2023, and 8.4% in 2024, from EPA awards.”
The Climate Judiciary Project is run by ELI, and “estimates that it has hosted more than 50 events and trained more than 2,000 judges,” according to the letter.
An American energy advocacy group, the American Energy Institute, claims the project is “corruptly influencing the courts and destroying the rule of law to promote climate cult alarmism,” the letter cites.
The AGs also refer to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, saying that the project’s curriculum “reads like a playbook for judges to find in favor of plaintiffs in artificial climate change cases against traditional energy companies.”
According to an alumni magazine profile, the Climate Judiciary Project co-founder explained “the science of climate change to a group of people with real power to act on it: judges.”
“State consumer protection laws prohibit deceptive and misleading statements to market a product,” the AGs wrote. “ELI is representing its training as objective when reality shows that it is not. State Attorneys General are responsible for protecting consumers, and we are concerned by ELI’s statements.
“EPA should not be funding these activities or the organization that sponsors them. We respectfully request that EPA cancel any on-going grants to ELI and ensure that ELI does not receive any future grants while it is sponsoring the Climate Judiciary Project.”
