West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey
CHARLESTON – West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey has joined a 23-state coalition of AGs urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to cancel grants to the Environmental Law Institute, which has been funding climate advocacy trainings for judges across the country.
In a letter sent last week to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, the group of AGs outlines its concerns with taxpayer dollars going to fund ELI and its Climate Judiciary Project, which has hosted more than 50 events and trained more than 2,000 judges on their own version of climate science.
While the Climate Judiciary Project claims it is providing “objective and trusted” education, the AGs say the group appears to be lobbying judges to make climate change policy through the courts.
In 2023, the ELI received about 13 percent of its revenue from EPA grants with an additional 8.4 percent in 2024.
“For far too long the courts have been weaponized to promote the liberal agenda, harming not only our energy independence, but also our democracy,” McCuskey said. “Our courts must remain fair and impartial, and I urge the EPA to stop the flow of taxpayer dollars to this group immediately.”
The Climate Judiciary Project describes itself as providing “authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science” through seminars and workshops with climate experts. However, the AGs say its training improperly sways the judiciary by exposing judges, who may hear climate related cases, to material produced by the same organizations involved in litigation, therefore undermining the impartiality of the courts.
The AGs also raise concern with the Climate Judiciary Project’s deceptive and misleading statements used to market the training, as state consumer protection laws prohibit such statements.
“State Attorneys General are responsible for protecting consumers, and we are concerned by ELI’s statements,” the attorneys general wrote.
The attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming also joined the letter led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen.
