Top Republicans on the House Committee on Natural Resources want answers about how almost two dozen “radical environmental groups” are potentially profiting directly from taxpayer dollars.
Republicans on the committee, led by its chairman, Rep. Bruce Westerman (R., Ark.), wrote to the leadership of Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Cascadia Wildlands, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, High Country Conservation Advocates, Montana Environmental Information Center, Native Ecosystems Council, Natural Resources Defense Council, Oregon Wild, Rocky Mountain Wild, San Juan Citizens Alliance, Sierra Club, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, The Wilderness Society, Wilderness Watch and Wilderness Workshop.
The investigation, obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter, could pose major problems for groups at the heart of the Democratic Party’s agenda. In one letter, for example, Westerman, alongside Reps. Tom McClintock (R., Calif.), Paul Gosar (R., Ariz.), Daniel Webster (R., Fla.), Russ Fulcher (R., Idaho), Pete Stauber (R., Minn.), Tom Tiffany (R., Wis.), Lauren Boebert (R., Colo.), Cliff Bentz (R., Ore.), Harriet Hageman (R., Wyo.), Mike Ezell (R., Miss.), Celeste Maloy (R., Utah), Addison McDowell (R., N.C.), Jeff Crank (R., Colo.), Nick Begich (R., Alaska), Mike Kennedy (R., Utah) and Troy Downing (R., Mont.) wrote to Manish Bapna, the President and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), outlining concerns about the “NRDC’s coordinated capitalization on misleading and emotive messaging to build powerful and profitable litigation machines funded by taxpayer dollars through the exploitation of statutory fee-shifting provisions.”
The GOP lawmakers outlined to Bapna how organizations like his have been able to potentially abuse the American legal system, to “permit radical environmental organizations [like the NRDC] to effectively function as taxpayer-funded law firms, employing a simple, lucrative profit model: sue to block federal actions in friendly courts, collect taxpayer-funded attorney’s fees and costs and fundraise off of courtroom victories.”
“Today, most environmental litigation is brought under statutes with embedded fee-shifting provisions, like the Endangered Species Act, or statutes covered by the catch-all Equal Access to Justice Act, like the National Environmental Policy Act, enabling prominent environmental nonprofits already flush with cash to recover the litigation costs of their lawfare campaigns,” the lawmakers note. “Additionally, these lawsuits prevent necessary land management activities and thwart the efforts of President [Donald] Trump and Congressional Republicans to safeguard American energy independence and support responsible management of our natural resources.”
Among the litany of problems that Westerman and his colleagues outline is that activist groups like the NRDC do not even need to “win” in a traditional sense to recoup major attorney’s fees. “In many cases, nonprofit plaintiffs do not even need to fully ‘win’ a case to recover fees,” they explained. “For example, under EAJA, ‘prevailing’ plaintiffs can recover attorney’s fees with ‘even a partial victory or procedural settlement…regardless of the lawsuit’s broader merit or public benefit.’ Under ESA, the standard is even more ambiguous: courts may award fees and costs ‘to any party, whenever the court determines such award is appropriate.’”
Groups like the NRDC, they add, benefit from the status quo, which incentivizes the government to “settle disputes, rather than contest the fee award, to reduce the overall attorney’s fees that may accrue.”
“Because the U.S. government often fails to adequately contest fee awards and regularly concedes prevailing party status to nonprofit groups in settlement agreements, taxpayer dollars effectively fund these nonprofits’ sue-and-settle tactics,” they note.
Westerman and his colleagues tie their investigations into the broader efforts by Trump and congressional Republicans to “root out waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars.”
Their initial findings, they wrote, suggest that “oversight mechanisms typically built into an attorney-client relationship, like the ability for a client to review and dispute detailed time logs for which they are billed before they pay any invoice, do not exist in adequate form to protect taxpayer dollars awarded to radical nonprofit organizations through litigation.”
The lawmakers want answers from the NRDC and the other 18 organizations by September 18. Their top request is for “documents, communications, and other information sufficient to demonstrate NRDC’s decision-making process related to pursuing legal action against federal agencies or personnel related to natural resources policy and law, including but not limited to domestic energy or mining projects, national forest or public land management, species management, NEPA, ESA, the Federal Land Policy Management Act (FLPMA), the Mineral Leasing Act (MLA), the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), MMPA, or MSA.”
They also want “documents, communications, and other information sufficient to demonstrate NRDC’s decision-making process related to intervening in or otherwise participating in lawsuits involving federal agencies or personnel—subject to the oversight jurisdiction of the Committee—not originally brought by NRDC”; “documents, communications, and other information sufficient to demonstrate NRDC’s forum shopping process when pursuing legal action involving federal agencies or personnel—subject to the oversight jurisdiction of the Committee—including but not limited to venue or federal judicial district selection”; and “documents, communications, and other information sufficient to demonstrate NRDC’s policies and procedures related to staffing relevant federal litigation matters, including but not limited to employing in-house attorneys, retaining outside counsel, or coordinating with other nonprofit organizations employing in-house attorneys or retaining outside counsel for any given relevant federal lawsuit.”
The lawmakers note that September 18 is not a date to confirm receipt of their demands; “failure to timely respond to the Committee’s letter or otherwise cooperate in good faith with the Committee’s oversight investigation will force the Committee to evaluate the use of compulsory process.”
