Policy and Legislation Team
Matt Roth for Earthjustice
(202) 667-4500
eajuspal@earthjustice.org
The original stewards of the lands where the Policy & Legislation office is located were the Nacotchtank people, and later, the Piscataway and Pamunkey peoples. As occupiers of this land, we recognize that a land acknowledgment alone does not sufficiently honor the connection between these sacred lands and the Indigenous caretakers, but provides us a chance to more deeply contemplate the many Indigenous movements for sovereignty and reparations. Learn about our Tribal partnerships work.
Media Inquiries
Geoffrey Nolan
Public Affairs and Communications Officer
gnolan@earthjustice.org
Legal Assistance Inquiries
Contacto de Prensa
Robert Valencia
Estratega de Comunicaciones y Asuntos Públicos Hispanos/Latinos
rvalencia@earthjustice.org
(212) 845-7376
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The original stewards of the lands where the Policy & Legislation office is located were the Nacotchtank people, and later, the Piscataway and Pamunkey peoples. As occupiers of this land, we recognize that a land acknowledgment alone does not sufficiently honor the connection between these sacred lands and the Indigenous caretakers, but provides us a chance to more deeply contemplate the many Indigenous movements for sovereignty and reparations. Learn about our Tribal partnerships work.
The Policy and Legislation team has experts working with our clients and partners on environmental priorities across all of Earthjustice’s programmatic work. We are fighting for legislation and administrative policy that advances environmental justice, protects our lands, oceans, and wildlife, and secures a 100% clean energy future. Also housed within Policy and Legislation is the Access to Justice team, which defends against legislative and administrative attacks on the public’s ability to seek justice in the courts.
Our Impact
When Earthjustice wins environmental victories in the courts, the Policy and Legislation team fights back against the anti-environmental interests in Washington, D.C., that try to overturn those court decisions through legislation in Congress.
To solidify the enduring impact of our legal victories, the Policy and Legislation team works with champions in Congress and in the administration to push legislation and policies that support and extends our gains.
Landmark Victories
- Strengthening and defending the Worker Protection Standard: In 2015, Earthjustice and our farmworker partners strengthened the Agricultural Worker Protection Standard to protect farmworkers and their families from pesticide exposure and poisoning. Then, in 2017, when the Trump administration attempted to gut these basic protections, we successfully protected the Agricultural Worker Protection Standard along with our partners and secured legislation in 2019 that prevented then-President Trump from weakening nearly all of these protections.
- Defending access to justice at the U.S. Forest Service: Over the course of the 114th and 115th Congresses, we witnessed a sharp increase in legislation pushed by special interests to restrict people’s ability to use the courts to seek justice. The biggest environmental access to justice threats during the 115th Congress were attempts to limit the public’s access to the courts through the Forest Service. Earthjustice successfully defended against all 17 of these legislative attacks, including a bill that would have eliminated judicial review of the Forest Service by allowing the agency to divert legal challenges of their actions to arbitration.
- Defeating Big Oil and protecting the Methane and Waste Prevention Rule: In 2016, the Obama administration’s Bureau of Land Management finalized a safeguard to limit methane pollution from oil and gas operations on federal lands. Just months later, under the newly elected Trump administration, the oil and gas industry and their Congressional supporters tried to undo the BLM methane rule using the Congressional Review Act. Earthjustice, in coordination with a broad group of partners, Congressional allies, and thousands of supporters from across the country, successfully defeated Congressional attempts to roll back this important safeguard on the Senate floor.
- Permanently protecting Paradise Valley, the northern gateway to Yellowstone National Park from Gold Mining: Working in partnership with a wide variety of partners, groups, and businesses opposed to industrial gold mining north of Yellowstone National Park, in early 2019, we passed the Yellowstone Gateway Protection Act as part of a larger package of lands bills in Congress. The passage of the bill, which provides permanent protection for this important landscape came after a large and concerted effort to garner bipartisan support to stop mining in this remote landscape that includes Yellowstone River tributaries and is in the heart of the Paradise Valley, a tourism-based economy that is also precious habitat for endangered grizzly bears, as well as wolverines, lynx, elk, and other species.
