Attorney General Knudsen leads coalition urging EPA to halt funding climate activist group

HELENA – Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen led a 23-state coalition of attorneys general urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to cancel grants to the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) which has been funding climate advocacy trainings for judges across the country.

In a letter sent Tuesday to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Attorney General Knudsen outlines his concerns with taxpayer dollars going to fund ELI and their 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 they are providing “objective and trusted” education, the group appears to be lobbying judges to make climate change policy through the courts.

In 2023, the ELI received approximately 13 percent of its revenue from EPA grants with an additional 8.4 percent in 2024.

“As attorney general, I refuse to stand by while Americans’ tax dollars fund radical environmental training for judges across the country. The Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project is using woke climate propaganda, under the guise of what they call ‘neutral’ education, to persuade judges and push their wildly unpopular agenda through the court system,” Attorney General Knudsen said. “I commend President Trump’s efforts to cut waste and abuse during the first eight months of his presidency, and I am optimistic that his Administration will do the right thing and halt all funding to ELI.”

The Climate Judiciary Project describes themselves as “authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science,” through seminars and workshops with climate experts. However, their 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.

Attorney General Knudsen raises further 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,” Attorney General Knudsen wrote.

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, West Virginia, and Wyoming joined the letter.

Read the letter here.