Trump administration moves to block public from enforcing environmental protection laws
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A citizen-initiated lawsuit under the Clean Air Act forced a cleanup at ExxonMobil’s Baytown, Texas, refinery and chemical complex.<br>AP Photo/Ashley Landis
https://theconversation.com/trump-administration-moves-to-block-public-from-enforcing-environmental-protection-laws-288687
https://theconversation.com/trump-administration-moves-to-block-public-from-enforcing-environmental-protection-laws-288687
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Reducing rampant pollution across the United States was so important that when Congress passed many environmental protection laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, it didn’t want to leave enforcement only to the executive branch.
Congress specifically wrote into those laws ways for citizens to enforce them through the courts when the government does not act to address the problem. Called “citizen suit provisions,” those parts of the laws allow regular people and advocacy groups to sue companies they believe are violating the law. Citizens can also sue federal agencies that fail to enforce the laws.
Since the 1970s, those provisions have been used in over 2,000 lawsuits. In fact, a majority of environmental cases are citizen suit cases. Citizen suits have been used to halt the construction of dams to protect endangered species, end the injection of wastewater into groundwater, and secure US$14.2 million in civil penalties for illegal emissions from a petrochemical facility. In short, these cases have shaped modern environmental law.
Now, in a legal filing, the Trump administration is saying citizens should not be allowed to enforce environmental laws. Rather, despite what the laws say, the U.S. Department of Justice has claimed in a case involving Elon Musk’s xAI that people should be required to leave enforcement to the executive branch – even if the executive decides to take no action.
The Clairton Coke Works in Clairton, Penn., was forced to clean up its emissions and more effectively monitor pollution in a settlement of a citizen suit under the Clean Air Act.<br>Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images
A history of success
For more than 50 years, citizen suits have been an effective part of cleaning up the environment in the U.S. The process is fairly straightforward: A person or group must send a formal notification to the person, company or agency they suspect of violating the law – with a copy to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. If after 60 days the problem is not rectified, the people can sue.
Citizen suits often ask the courts to order a stop to the polluting activity, payments for reducing or cleaning up the harm done, and civil penalties paid to the government. But if the government has already begun an enforcement action or is actively prosecuting the violator, a citizen suit cannot proceed.
The success of these cases depends on the ability of the plaintiff to prove a violation of the law. Violations of the Clean Water Act are somewhat easier to prove than violations of other statutes because the simple act of discharging a pollutant without a permit is a violation of the law. As a result, more citizen suit provisions have been brought under the Clean Water Act than under any other environmental statute.
In my area of research, plastic pollution, citizen suits have been used to hold plastic pellet manufacturers responsible for pollution. For example, the citizen suit provision of the Clean Water Act allowed Diane Wilson, a shrimper from Texas’ Gulf Coast, to sue Formosa Plastics in 2017 for persistent discharges of plastic pellets into Lavaca Bay, where some shrimp were caught, and which is connected to the Gulf of Mexico. In 2019, Formosa ended up settling for $50 million to pay for mitigation and remediation projects in the bay, cleaning up plastic and other pollution. Formosa also agreed to pay court costs and attorneys fees.
In another example, the environmental advocacy groups PennEnvironment and Three Rivers Waterkeeper in 2023 sued Styropek USA, which manufactured expandable polystyrene used for packaging and shipping, over pellet discharges into a western Pennsylvania creek. The pellets attracted and collected other toxic chemicals and were harming local aquatic plants and fish. In 2025, Styropek settled for $2.5 million. As part of the settlement agreement, Styropek agreed to install filters in the facility’s wastewater and stormwater systems to capture plastic pellets before they reached Raccoon Creek or the Ohio River. Styropek also had to eliminate the unauthorized discharge of plastic pellets from all of the facility’s stormwater drains.
Citizen suit provisions are not included in every law. But they have arisen in other contexts. For instance, a 2025 Texas state law seeks to restrict abortion...