Taxpayers Send Millions to Nonprofits Filing Costly Climate-Related Lawsuits

Americans enjoy some of the most robust environmental protections in the world, striking a difficult balance among environmental preservation, technological innovation and infrastructure development needed to grow the economy.

Lawsuits can tie up infrastructure and energy projects for years, all the while costing huge sums. While organizations and individuals are free to undertake litigation as they deem fit, the situation becomes more ponderous when those organizations are also funded using taxpayer dollars. Taxpayers then end up paying for litigation against the government they are also funding.

Open the Books investigated legal actions filed under various environmental policy laws to determine which organizations were suing the federal government the most during the Biden administration and the first Trump administration (2017-2024).

Data was obtained from Columbia University’s Climate Case Chart database in March, 2025. The database is a curated archive of legal action in the United States brought before a judicial body and substantively deals in the topic of “climate change.” Actions are brought under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), the Clean Air Act (CAA), and a category labeled “other statutes.” Most of the 816 curated lawsuits are against federal agencies.

Top ten primary litigants in climate-related legal actions, from the Columbia University Climate Case Chart Database, accessed March 2025.

The organization bringing the most climate-related legal actions during this timeframe is the Center of Biological Diversity, with 132. Of those, 80 are under the ESA, and 23 are under NEPA. In a distant second place is Sierra Club (28), followed by WildEarth Guardians (26) and Natural Resources Defense Council (25).

Federal Funding

Most of these top nonprofit plaintiffs did not receive new federal grants or contracts. But some spending sticks out:

Center for Biological Diversity is not a federal grantee but received nearly $3 million in federal COVID aid in 2020. This loan was forgiven, meaning the organization does not have to pay it back.

Curiously, 2020 was a profitable year for CBD, which generated $27.3 million in revenue, compared to 2019’s $22.5 million.

Appalachian Voices received the most federal grant funding in between its eight lawsuits against the federal government, at about $2.5 million. The nonprofit works in Central and Southern Appalachia to “advance a just transition to a generative and equitable clean energy economy.” To accomplish this goal, Appalachian Voices leverages “grassroots organizing, community engagement, policy advocacy and technical expertise to hold decision makers accountable in courtrooms, in state capitals and in Washington, D.C.”

Major campaigns include “stopping pipelines and fracked gas buildout” and “energy democracy for all.”

Federal grants to Appalachian Voices include $2 million for “business technical assistance” and $500,000 for a “coal community resilience planning model and toolkit.” One grant, worth $118,297, is still on-going until 2026.

Appalachian Voices received an additional $807,029 in federal COVID aid.

WildEarth Guardians, which has 26 lawsuits, also received a grant: $99,445 for work restoring a watershed. The nonprofit works to preserve wild areas in the American West through policy advocacy and litigation. It’s also devoted to the principles of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), stating:

“As advocates for justice, we must reflect upon and address the ways in which unequal distribution and consolidation of power and privilege have had–and continue to have–unjust impacts on the interconnected web of people and nature.”

WildEarth Guardians additionally received about $500,000 in federal COVID aid.

State Funding

States are also funding these litigious nonprofits, fueling advocacy and litigation work that could change local, state, and/or federal policy.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which had by far the most lawsuits at 132, received about $2.2 million from states from 2017-2024, according to the Open the Books database, principally from Oregon ($1.8 million).

It is not publicly known what the funding was used for, but it came from the state’s Department of Administrative Services, which “works to effectively implement the policy and financial decisions made by the Governor and the Oregon Legislature,” according to its website.

2017-2024 state spending on the Center for Biological Diversity from the Open the Books database.

According to the Open the Books state spending database, states have spent a little over $1 million funding the Sierra Club or its local chapters from 2017-2024. Dominating state funding is California, with over $880,000.

2017-2024 state spending on Sierra Club from the Open the Books database.

WildEarth Guardians, which was involved in 26 climate-related lawsuits from 2017-2024, received $3,723,299 from the state of New Mexico from 2017-2020. The nonprofit’s headquarters are located in the state.

Natural Resources Defense Council, which was involved in 25 climate-related lawsuits from 2017-2024, received nearly $1 million from various states, nearly all of which came from Michigan.

2017-2024 state spending on Natural Resources Defense Council from the Open the Books database.

NEPA and the Council on Environmental Quality

The National Environmental Policy Act was signed into law in 1970 by Richard Nixon. NEPA was originally meant to make federal agencies take the environmental impacts of certain activities into consideration before making decisions. According to the EPA website, NEPA’s mandate includes:

• making decisions on permit applications,

• adopting federal land management actions, and

• constructing highways and other publicly-owned facilities

As a part of this process, in many cases proposed projects must include an environmental impact statement (EIS) or an environmental assessment (EA). This costs considerable time and money to prepare and review. Impact statements are the more complicated of the two. A 2020 analysis by the Council on Environmental Quality found that the average EIS completion time across the federal government was 4.5 years, with one quarter of them taking more than 6 years to complete.

Once an EIS is completed, reviewed, and approved by the relevant federal agency, it becomes open to litigation. Research from The Breakthrough Institute indicates that an average of 4.2 years elapse between the publication of an EIS and the conclusion of a legal challenge to it. Federal agencies won about 80% of these EIS challenges. The end result is projects that are delayed by many years with no additional environmental benefit.

The issue becomes particularly nonsensical when the nonprofit organizations that sue the agencies also receive federal grants, sometimes from those same agencies. In this way, the federal government is essentially funding lawsuits against itself, which harm projects that have already undergone a rigorous environmental review.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality, which was established by the passage of NEPA, oversees the law’s implementation to “balance environmental, economic, and social objectives.”

NEPA under Biden

The Biden administration made substantial changes to NEPA, also working with Congress to develop the first update to the legislation in 50 years. Some changes were intended to increase the speed and efficiency of EIS completion, particularly for favored “green” technologies. Some changes include:

• Increase the scope of “low-impact” projects eligible for categorical exclusions, which expedite the environmental review process. Such projects include “the deployment of clean energy, transmission, clean water, high-speed internet, semi-conductor manufacturing, and other crucial infrastructure.”

• Consider the effects of climate change in environmental reviews, and quantify the foreseeable greenhouse gas emissions of a project

• “Advance environmental justice and promote meaningful public input”

• Set deadlines and page limits for environmental reviews

The Biden administration also sent $1 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act to accelerate environmental reviews by hiring experts and implementing new technologies to streamline the process. The huge investment apparently worked; EIS completion rates were reduced by eight months compared to the Trump administration, according to a Biden-era CEQ review.

CEQ itself was also expanded under Biden. Its budget went from about $1 million to $9 million in 2023, to an estimated $17 million in 2024. Similarly, employee headcount more than quadrupled, from 12 in 2020 to 51 by 2024.

Open the Books reviewed legal actions under NEPA specifically from 2017-2024 from Columbia University’s case law chart website, which tracks climate change-related litigation. The total number of captured cases was 292.

Of those, 27 entities sued the federal government over NEPA over three times each, totaling 134 cases between them. The top three litigants were Center for Biological Diversity (23 cases), WildEarth Guardians (13 cases) and Sierra Club (12 cases).

Six plaintiffs were receiving federal funds around the same time as their legal action (2017-2024), for a total of $31.9 million.

National Wildlife Federation (NWF), which sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under NEPA four times, received most of the funds, at $22.6 million.

A large portion of those funds ($8 million), came from the Environmental Protection Agency to create an “Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center” which would “provide outreach to communities in need of technical assistance and increase capacity and knowledge related to environmental and energy justice concerns.”

NWF also got a $322,509 contract called “Ugly to Beautiful: Changing the Visual Acceptability of Cover Crops,” which involved developing and testing a “multi-faceted media campaign to build supportive social norms for soil health practices.”

Thirteen grants remain active into 2026 and beyond, including one worth $2 million for “pioneering wildlife friendly climate smart pine straw markets.”

CEQ Under Trump Term Two

The Trump administration has prioritized NEPA reform. On the first day of Trump’s second term, the president signed Executive Order 14154 “Unleashing American Energy,” which, among other items, revoked a Carter-era Executive Order that stated the CEQ regulations would be binding. In other words CEQ would now only issue guidelines, not rules which must necessarily be followed. Also in early 2025, CEQ asked agencies to develop their own procedures for devising NEPA-related legislation.

In September 2025, CEQ released guidance to agencies to help streamline their individual NEPA review processes. According to a press release, many agency-specific NEPA procedures had not been updated since the original NEPA law was passed over five decades ago.

As 2025 winds down, Open the Books will be analyzing NEPA, and other environmental law, litigation under the first Trump administration. We will produce data on outlays and employees at the CEQ, along with continued state and federal funding for nonprofits blocking infrastructure projects.

Click here to download the full list of climate-related cases and nonprofit litigants.