You’ve Probably Never Heard of This DOJ Division, but It’s Key to Rebuilding Our Environmental Policy
The Biden administration has selected their nominee for AAG of ENRD at DOJ. Here's what that means.
Todd Kim has been nominated to lead the environmental division at DOJ.
U.S. Department of Energy
Department of Energy attorney Todd Kim has been nominated to serve as Assistant Attorney General (AAG) of the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) at the Department of Justice (DOJ). While Earthjustice attorneys welcome this nomination and look forward to working with Kim, they also expect to face off with his team. Here’s why:
ENRD is the only organization in this country that files more environmental lawsuits than Earthjustice. Unlike some of its sister divisions at DOJ, like Civil Rights and Criminal, ENRD is not widely known even to legal enthusiasts. But anyone who cares about how our government prosecutes, defends, and administers our environmental laws should be paying attention to this division — and to the person nominated to run it. ENRD’s roughly 550 lawyers represent the government in cases involving everything from pollution to public lands, and from wildlife to tribal sovereignty.
ENRD lawyers prosecute cases that enforce important environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and Superfund law. This certainly includes criminal cases against shady midnight chemical dumpers and wildlife traffickers. But more often it involves civil enforcement cases against defendants like utilities that aren’t investing in up-to-date emissions controls, oil companies drilling without the right safety equipment, or city governments that aren’t delivering clean drinking water. Take a glance at some of ENRD’s recent press releases to get a sense of the scope of its affirmative work — including a recent lawsuit against the Tiger King.
ENRD’s lawyers also go to court to defend government actions that get challenged by Earthjustice and its allies. This includes actions like the Trump administration’s efforts to gut the National Environmental Policy Act, weaken the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, permit the Dakota Access Pipeline, and nearly two hundred other actions (yes, we have a list). To the extent that we have yet to feel the worst of the Trump administration’s threatened actions on the environment, it’s because ENRD spent a lot of the last four years losing these kinds of cases in court — thanks to the Trump administration’s disdain for law and science. Will ENRD’s defensive role matter when a more environmentally-friendly administration is in charge? Absolutely! ENRD attorneys will have to defend new rules against legal challenges from industry, and Earthjustice will also be fighting in court to hold the Biden administration accountable to its campaign promises.
Relatedly, ENRD plays a significant role when it comes to replacing bad agency rules — rules made without adequate consideration for the science, the environmental impacts, or the communities affected — with good ones. As much as we might want them to, ENRD’s lawyers can’t just waltz into court once Biden is inaugurated and announce they’ve decided they are going to stop defending the rulemakings finalized under Trump — just like the government couldn’t simply walk away from Obama-era rules when Trump took office. ENRD lawyers will have to persuade judges that the new administration’s course changes are based on science and sound policy, not raw politics. Decisions about how and when the government will dance this minuet of persuasion will have a big impact on what rules get rolled back and when. And who calls the tune? The new ENRD AAG.
The AAG will also be critical to the Biden administration’s efforts to address environmental justice and climate change. To be effective, the next AAG of the division will need to know how to get good cases — the kind of cases that make good law — referred to ENRD by the relevant agency. They will need to know how to effectively manage investigations. Most of all, they will need to know how to win cases and create positive precedent through court rulings.
President-elect Biden put an important marker down when he named former senator and Secretary of State John Kerry the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy to lead the new White House Office of Climate Policy. He has also said that the U.S. will rejoin the Paris Climate Accords, and he has continued to promise that combating climate change will be a central goal of his administration. Nominees for key positions have been confirmed, such as Deb Haaland for Secretary of the Interior, Michael Regan for Administrator of the EPA, and Merrick Garland for Attorney General. Now, we look forward to Kim’s confirmation and the opportunity to work with him, in and out of court.
Sam Sankar (@sambhavsankar) is Earthjustice’s Senior Vice President for Programs. He leads the development of Earthjustice’s strategies for carrying out its mission, and coordinates the work of our Litigation, Communications, and Policy and Legislation departments.
Earthjustice’s Washington, D.C., office works at the federal level to prevent air and water pollution, combat climate change, and protect natural areas. We also work with communities in the Mid-Atlantic region and elsewhere to address severe local environmental health problems, including exposures to dangerous air contaminants in toxic hot spots, sewage backups and overflows, chemical disasters, and contamination of drinking water. The D.C. office has been in operation since 1978.
