Environmental-Protection-Agency

In the past two years, litigators at the Natural Resources Defense Council have filed nearly 80 cases challenging Trump administration attempts to roll back environmental and human health protections.

That's the equivalent of a new lawsuit every 10 days—and so far, the environmentalists are winning. According to a new analysis by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, the NRDC lawyers have prevailed more than 90 percent of the time in the cases that have been resolved.

“The Trump Administration is taking a hatchet to environmental protections we've come to count on over the decades. But in court, facts matter. That's why we feel confident we can stop the most egregious lawlessness coming from the White House and federal agencies,” said Aaron Colangelo, litigation co-director at NRDC. 

Among the successful suits: protecting the rusty patched bumble bee, limiting discharges of mercury from dental offices and methane emissions from landfills, persuading a federal judge that the Department of Energy had violated a “clear-cut duty” to publish a new energy efficiency rule, challenging the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over a rule concerning penalties for violations of fuel economy standards and reinstating efficiency rules for air conditioners and heat pumps.

In 2006, the NRDC established a specialized team of litigating attorneys to bolster its trial expertise. The non-profit now has about 32 highly-credentialed lawyers and fellows based in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, New York and Chicago.

“We tell stories,” NRDC chief counsel Mitch Bernard said in a profile on the organization's website. “We include details that relate to the theme; we use imagery that reflects and deepens and clarifies that theme.”

And their docket “has exploded,” he said. “We've never faced an administration whose values are so diametrically opposed to NRDC's.”