Nearly two dozen state attorneys general are challenging the Trump administration’s overhaul of permitting requirements, a bedrock environmental law that has been central to California, Washington state, and other states’ fight against expanded fossil fuel production.
The White House is “trying to really break one of the premier protections we have in this country for our environment and moving human health forward,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, told reporters Friday.
Becerra and Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, also a Democrat, are leading 23 state attorneys in challenging the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s recent overhaul of the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, often called the “Magna Carta” of environmental laws. The Trump administration’s move, in an effort to speed approval of infrastructure projects, ushers in significant changes to the decadesold regime of environmental reviews.
The states’ lawsuit, filed in a federal district court in California, follows three similar challenges from coalitions of environmental groups. Becerra said it marks California’s 100th lawsuit against the Trump administration, half of which are fighting environmental rollbacks.
Becerra and Ferguson both slammed Trump’s NEPA overhaul as unlawful and damaging to human health.
The attorneys general also said that Trump’s actions eliminate an arrow states have had in their quiver to battle the administration’s efforts to ramp up U.S. production of coal, oil, and natural gas.
Ferguson, for example, said NEPA was critical in a legal victory Washington state, California, and several other states clinched blocking Trump administration attempts to open federal lands up to more coal leasing.
“Look, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that after losing in court over and over and over again to California and Washington and a broad coalition of states on environmental cases that the Trump administration wants to gut one of the key, foundational environmental laws that we have,” the Washington attorney general said.
The Trump administration’s changes to NEPA would require environmental reviews to be completed within two years and set page limits for the assessments. The revisions also remove requirements that projects consider “cumulative” environmental effects, which opponents have said is an effort to diminish climate change considerations. The Trump administration also limits the scope of projects that would be subject to reviews.
Environmentalists have warned the Trump administration’s move will sideline public input, especially risking the health of minorities who often live closest to industrial facilities.
Becerra also suggested Trump’s changes to NEPA would make it more difficult for states such as California to object to federal infrastructure and energy projects that could harm the environment.
The changes to NEPA are the “capstone” of the Trump administration’s “systemic attempt to roll back environmental protections,” Ferguson said.
