2019:
A Year in Earthjustice

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This year,
with your extraordinary support,
our lawyers were fighting for our planet

in courts across the country.

Jamie Dobbs / Earthjustice

2019 was a year of challenges, for the environment and the climate.

But the biggest story of the year?

In this defining moment
for our country and our climate,
2019 was a year of
phenomenal legal victories,
doing good for the earth and its people.


And it happened
because of you.

Melissa Lyttle for Earthjustice
WECAN Indigenous Womenʼs Tongass Delegation

You raised the voices of Indigenous women to save the ancient trees of Tongass National Forest

The Story The Legal Team
Attorneys in the Alaska Regional Office have defended the Tongass for more than three decades, most recently winning a preliminary injunction on Sept. 23 that halted the initial phase of the largest timber sale approved by the U.S. Forest Service in 30 years.

“Our culture is alive.” — Kari Ames, Tlingit

Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice
Client: Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma

Stopped illegal fracking on Tribal lands

The Story The Legal Team
Attorneys in the Rocky Mountain Office filed suit against the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Land Management on behalf of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma after the U.S. government violated the law by approving oil and gas leases on Pawnee land without consulting Tribal members. As a result, many of the leases are now invalidated or expired.

“These are very arrogant companies running roughshod over everybody. It’s always good to put arrogance in its place.” —Walter Echo-Hawk, Pawnee Nation

Alejandro Davila Fragoso / Earthjustice
and Julie Dermansky
Client: Rise St. James

Challenged the massive carbon-polluting petrochemical complex in “Cancer Alley”

The Story The Legal Team
Petrochemical plants are the next frontier in the climate fight. Attorneys in the Fossil Fuels Program represent RISE St. James and Louisiana Bucket Brigade in their fight against the Formosa petrochemical plant.

“We are going to fight and do everything we can to keep it away from us.” —Sharon Lavigne, Rise St. James

You were alongside us,
and our hundreds of public-interest clients,
as we confront
the climate crisis

Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice

Stopping billions of dollars of investment in dirty, climate-polluting fossil fuel infrastructure ...

The Story The Legal Team
Attorneys in Earthjustice's Coal Program and regional offices are working to end our nation’s reliance on dirty, expensive, and outdated coal-fired power plants, and to achieve a just transition to a clean energy economy.

Indiana regulators reject utility’s proposal for massive gas plant (Apr. 24)

Photo by Julie Dermansky

... on behalf of communities
from Louisiana to New York, Indiana to California,
Washington to Ohio

This Story

Judge sides with New Orleans residents in fight against dirty gas plant (Jun. 17)

Accelerating the rise
of 100% clean energy, from
Hawaiʻi to Montana, California to Capitol Hill

The Story The Legal Team
Attorneys in Earthjustice's Clean Energy Program and regional offices, and our policy experts on Capitol Hill, spur clean energy progress across the country by clearing regulatory hurdles and securing utility investment in renewable generation, energy efficiency, and other clean energy alternatives to fossil fuels, and more.

Earthjustice endorses House 100% Clean Energy Bill (Nov. 21)

Brinson + Banks

Advancing zero-emissions, as we transform the way we use energy and move goods and ourselves

Learn The Legal Team
Right to Zero is an Earthjustice campaign to create a zero-emissions California by transforming our energy and transportation economies. With renewable electricity and electric transportation, California can clean up the air in the most polluted communities in the country, spur job-creating innovation, and defend our climate.

Insider Briefing: The Future is Electric (Feb. 19)

Rising up from Florida to the nation’s capital to hold regulators accountable to setting robust goals for the cleanest, cheapest energy — energy efficiency

The Story The Legal Team
Attorneys in the Florida Regional Office represent the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, intervening in Public Service Commission proceedings to improve alarmingly low energy efficiency goals — three of which were set at zero — for the state’s largest electric utilities. In Washington, D.C., attorneys have worked for years to increase and enforce energy efficiency standards nationwide.

Florida Public Service Commission rejects energy conservation goals of zero (Nov. 5)

Brad Zweerink for Earthjustice

Expanding climate-smart agriculture and healthy soil laws to promote carbon farming

The Story The Legal Team
The Sustainable Food & Farming Program works to improve our nation’s food system, from crop selection and farming practices, to food processing and accessibility. They are working to incentivize farming practices known to reduce emissions of climate changing gases, and to encourage carbon farming.

Climate action is a secret winner in the Farm Bill (Jan. 8)

Melissa Lyttle for Earthjustice

You were with us at the U.S. Supreme Court for the clean water case of the century

The Story The Legal Team
Attorneys in the Mid-Pacific Office represent the Hawaiʻi Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club-Maui Group, Surfrider Foundation, and West Maui Preservation Association in a case concerning a Maui wastewater facility that discharges millions of gallons of treated sewage each day into the Pacific Ocean via the groundwater beneath the facility.

U.S. Supreme Court hears Hawaiʻi Clean Water Act case (Nov. 6)

Together,
we won landmark court rulings
to save our planet

Vicki Beaver / NOAA

You defended the Arctic Ocean from the administration’s efforts to turn it into an industrial drilling zone

The Story The Legal Team
Attorneys in the Alaska Regional Office represent the Alaska Wilderness League, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Greenpeace USA, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, REDOIL (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands), Sierra Club, and The Wilderness Society. The lawsuit was filed against President Trump, challenging his decision to jettison a permanent ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. Natural Resources Defense Council is co-counsel.

Judge strikes down Trump’s order to undo drilling protections for Arctic, Atlantic (Mar. 29)

Ensured the government’s approach to chemicals protects people and the environment — not chemical company profits

The Story The Legal Team
Attorneys in Earthjustice's Northeast Office represented the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Environmental Health Strategy Center, Environmental Working Group, Learning Disabilities Association of America, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, and We Act for Environmental Justice, in a lawsuit challenging how the U.S. EPA evaluates the risks of chemicals under the federal law known as the Toxic Substances Control Act.

Court rules that U.S. EPA unlawfully evaluated chemical risks to communities (Nov. 29)

Robert S. Donovan / CC BY 2.0
Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice

Protected our water from the industrial sludge of coal-fired power plants

Learn The Legal Team
Attorneys in Earthjustice's Coal Program represented the Environmental Integrity Project, Sierra Club, and Waterkeeper Alliance in a lawsuit challenging provisions of a 2015 EPA rule that allowed power plants to use outdated, unlined wastewater pits to continue treating some wastewater streams.

Federal appeals court orders EPA to strengthen rule on toxic power plant wastewater (Apr. 15)

Bob Wick / BLM

Saved treasured public lands
from being obliterated
for private profit

The Story The Legal Team
Attorneys in Earthjustice's California Regional Office represented the Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's approval of a corporation's plan to drain life-giving springs in the Mojave Trails National Monument.

Federal court rejects Trump Administration’s approval of California’s Cadiz water pipeline (Jun. 21)

Allison Henry / NOAA Fisheries

You protected
one of our world’s
rarest creatures

The Story The Legal Team
Attorneys in Earthjustice's Oceans Program represented the Conservation Law Foundation in a lawsuit to force federal regulators to comply with their legal responsibility to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale population. There are only around 400 North Atlantic right whales left on earth.

Court rules to protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whale (Oct. 29)

Saved the lives
of hundreds of people
and
prevented thousands of asthma attacks

The Story The Legal Team
Attorneys in Earthjustice's Washington, D.C., Office represented the Sierra Club and Appalachian Mountain Club in a lawsuit challenging the U.S. EPA's failure to control ozone pollution — smog — that travels across state lines and contributes to unhealthy air. The lawsuit secured pollution reductions that will save hundreds of lives and prevent hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks every year. The ruling has major implications for other pending lawsuits.

D.C. Circuit rules EPA’s failure to protect people from cross-state air pollution is illegal (Oct. 24)

Photo by Mamta Popat

Stopped sacred burial grounds from being bulldozed at the 11th hour

The Story The Legal Team
Attorneys in Earthjustice's Rocky Mountain Office represented the Tohono O’odham Nation, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and the Hopi Tribe in a challenge to the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of Hudbay Minerals’ plan to raze the Tribes’ ancestral lands to construct a mile-wide open-pit copper mine in Arizona’s Santa Rita Mountains.

Court halts copper mine from desecrating Native American Tribes’ ancestral grounds (Jul. 31)

Meet our staff, including our 137 lawyers

And much more,
including important work at the United Nations
and in countries around the world
.

Together this year,
we did a lot of good,
despite the many challenges.

Don't miss The Year in Review by Abigail Dillen, President of Earthjustice.

You are more than
100,000 individual donors,
one million activists, and
generous foundations.
Your commitment and support
drives our work forward.
Thank you.

Our promise to you,
to our clients,
and to the planet:

We will keep fighting for justice,
for our earth
and its people.

New year, new career? We’re growing and hiring — we want you to join us.

Like what you saw?
Don’t let your friends
get left behind:
Tell them about Earthjustice.

Because the earth
needs a good lawyer.
Donate.

Make a tax-deductible donation before Dec. 31, and your gift will be matched $1-for-$1. Thank you.

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