More than a dozen health and environmental advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its decision to rescind key findings on climate change published in 2009.
This decision, known as an endangerment finding, established that greenhouse gases are a risk to public health and environmental safety, given that they are the primary cause of climate change.
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However, under President Donald Trump, the endangered status was revoked on February 12th.
That led to a first-of-its-kind lawsuit filed Wednesday alleging the Trump administration’s decisions endanger the health and well-being of Americans.
“Reversing the endangered status designation would put us all at risk. People around the world would face more pollution, higher costs, and thousands of avoidable deaths,” Peter Zarzal, vice president of clean air strategy at the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
The endangerment discovery was considered a cornerstone of U.S. environmental regulation, serving as the legal basis for policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions and promote clean energy programs.
But the Trump administration is leading a move to retreat from tackling climate change, both domestically and internationally.
Withdrawal from clean energy initiatives
Upon returning to office in January 2025, President Trump again announced that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, just as he did during his first term.
Most recently, on January 7 of this year, Republican leaders issued an executive order directing the government to end engagement with dozens of international organizations and treaties, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Trump campaigned on a platform of deregulation and reinvestment in fossil fuels, often using the slogan “Drill, baby, drill.”
Since then, he has taken steps toward new oil exploration on federal lands and offshore, and just this month announced the Pentagon would prioritize coal for energy production.
The president has coupled these actions with statements that call into question the science of climate change, which is supported by decades of evidence.
For example, in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Trump scolded world leaders for trying to combat climate change.
“In my opinion, this is the greatest fraud that has ever been committed in the world,” Trump said.
He also criticized predictions that global temperatures will rise as a result of large-scale emissions. He said these predictions were “made by foolish people” who doomed their country to “no chance of success”.
“If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country will fail. And I’m good at predicting things,” he told the world leaders in the audience.
“It’s not just a rollback.”
But reversing the endangered designation was one of President Trump’s most significant actions on the domestic front to halt clean energy efforts.
The Trump administration hailed the move as “the largest deregulatory move in U.S. history.”
They also argued that removing the hazard certification would allow U.S. consumers previously subject to emissions standards to have greater choice when purchasing vehicles.
But critics say it effectively undoes more than a decade and a half of environmental regulation and is even causing chaos in the auto industry.
“This is more than just a setback. The EPA is completely denying its legal authority to regulate greenhouse gases from automobiles,” Brian Link, senior attorney at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said in a statement Wednesday.
“This reckless and legally unsustainable decision creates immediate uncertainty for businesses, guarantees a protracted legal battle, and undermines the stability of federal climate regulation.”
The World Health Organization estimates that air pollution contributes to more than 7 million deaths annually. Wednesday’s lawsuit argues that the U.S. government has a responsibility to protect its citizens from such harm.
However, there is also an economic aspect. Supporters of the endangerment findings say repeal of the law will leave the United States behind in developing innovations to combat climate change and foster renewable energy.
Critics argue that U.S.-made cars could lose export markets overseas as many countries push for fuel emissions standards.
Wednesday’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. Circuit Court in Washington, D.C., names both the EPA and its administrator, Lee Zeldin, as defendants.
