Environmental groups sue Trump’s EPA over repeal of landmark climate finding

More than a dozen health and environmental justice non-profits have sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its revocation of the legal determination that underpins US federal climate regulations.Filed in Washington DC circuit court, the lawsuit challenges the EPA’s rollback of the “endangerment finding”, which states that the buildup of heat-trapping pollution in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare and has allowed the EPA to limit those emissions from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources since 2009. The rollback was widely seen as a major setback to US efforts to combat the climate crisis.The suit was brought by the American Public Health Association, American Lung Association, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and 11 other public health and environmental organizations. The lawsuit was filed by green legal organizations Clean Air Task Force and Earthjustice and it names the EPA and the agency’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, as defendants.“EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding and safeguards to limit vehicle emissions marks a complete dereliction of the agency’s mission to protect people’s health and its legal obligation under the Clean Air Act,” said Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO at the Union of Concerned Scientists, another one of the groups behind the lawsuit. “This shameful and dangerous action by the Trump administration and EPA Administrator Zeldin is rooted in falsehoods not facts and is at complete odds with the public interest and the best available science.”Last week Donald Trump hailed rescinding the finding as “the single largest deregulatory action in American history”, and Zeldin said the Obama and Biden administrations had used the endangerment finding “to steamroll into existence a leftwing wishlist of costly climate policies”.Asked about criticism and potential legal challenges to the move last week, an EPA spokesperson said: “The Trump EPA is following the law, ending the bogus overreach of previous administrations done by agenda-driven climate zealots.”When asked on Thursday about critics’ environmental and health concerns about the rollback, Trump said: “I’d tell them, don’t worry about it because it has nothing to do with public health.”Dr Georges Benjamin, CEO of the American Public Health Association, noted on a press call on Thursday that the endangerment finding has been repeatedly upheld amid previous challenges.“EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas has already been confirmed by the supreme court nearly two decades ago and has constantly been reaffirmed by the courts,” he said. “The science is clear here. The endangerment findings [are] based on decades of scientific consensus that climate change is real.”The EPA was not immediately available for comment.Early Thursday, 18 young people, aged 1 to 22, from across the US filed a separate petition challenging the rescission of the endangerment finding. They were represented by non-profit legal organizations Our Children’s Trust – which scored a landmark win in a constitutional climate lawsuit in Montana in 2023 – and Public Justice.“The EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding violates my first amendment right to practice my faith and my fifth amendment rights to life and liberty,” said Elena Venner, the lead petitioner.