Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen is spearheading a 23-state coalition of attorneys general urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to halt grants to the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), a group that has been providing climate-focused trainings for judges nationwide.
In a letter sent Tuesday to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Knudsen raised concerns that taxpayer dollars are funding ELI’s Climate Judiciary Project, which has hosted more than 50 events and trained over 2,000 judges on climate science from the organization’s perspective. While ELI describes the program as “objective and trusted” education, Knudsen and other coalition members argue that the project effectively encourages judges to shape climate policy through the courts.
“As attorney general, I refuse to stand by while Americans’ tax dollars fund radical environmental training for judges across the country,” Knudsen said. “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.”
ELI received roughly 13 percent of its revenue from EPA grants in 2023 and an additional 8.4 percent in 2024. The coalition also cited concerns about the organization’s marketing of the program, alleging that its statements could be misleading under state consumer protection laws.
