A coalition of 20 states and the District of Columbia is suing the Trump administration for weakening endangered species’ protections by rolling back regulations guiding the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
In early September, 21 attorneys general filed two lawsuits, one against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and the other against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and USFWS.
The states seek to vacate and set aside the agencies’ rules that “significantly weaken protections for our nation’s most imperiled species.” The lawsuits claim the revised regulations violate the ESA, Administrative Procedure Act and National Environmental Policy Act.
“For over half a century, the ESA has stood as a bipartisan example of what it means to protect an irreplaceable part of our planet, but these new rules attempt to destroy longstanding and integral regulatory protections and open the door to further species decline and possible extinctions,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. “Today, we are taking action to protect our environment and all those with whom we share the planet.”
The lawsuits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
Lawsuit details
At issue in the lawsuits are the Trump administration’s “harm rule,” “habitat exclusion rule” and “4(d) rule.”
The USFWS and NMFS had previously determined that the prior definition of “harm” was unlawful and interfered with private property rights. The critical habitat exclusion rule established a framework for excluding habitat if the benefits outweigh the benefits of including it. The 4(d) rule removed the “blanket rule” option for newly listed species, which created a default management for threatened species unless an exception was made with a specific 4(d) rule.
The attorneys general argue that as a result of the three rules, the protections for endangered and threatened species have been “seriously undermined.”
They contend that the harm rule weakens the ESA’s ability to protect against species’ breeding and feeding grounds, pollution or draining of water sources, or degradation of habitats. The attorneys general also point to the habitat exclusion rule for limiting the USFWS’ ability to protect and recover species by reducing the extent of protected critical habitat.
They assert that the 4(d) rule leaves threatened species vulnerable because the USFWS will now adopt species-specific regulations with no requirement or timeframe for doing so. The 4(d) rule also requires the agency to consider the economic impacts before creating species-specific rules.
The Department of Interior maintains that the Trump administration has been implementing the ESA as it was written.
“This lawsuit seeks to preserve a decades-old regulatory overreach that expanded the Endangered Species Act beyond the authority granted by Congress,” the Department of Interior told Reuters. “The department will vigorously defend its authority to implement the law according to its plain text.” — Anna Miller Fortozo, WLJ managing editor
