Since NRDC’s founding in 1970, our attorneys have been at the forefront of the environmental legal movement. In 2006, we established the Litigation Team—a specialized team of attorneys who litigate across the breadth of NRDC’s specializations—to bolster our litigation capacity, particularly in complex and evidentiary cases. We litigate across a broad range of environmental and public health issues, often working closely with NRDC’s subject-matter experts. In addition to representing NRDC, our attorneys may also represent other nonprofit organizations, community groups, and individuals.
Today, the litigation team includes about 40 attorneys and assistants in Chicago; New York City; San Francisco; Santa Monica, California; and Washington, D.C. In federal and state courts across the country, we advance and defend environmental protections and hold polluters accountable when they break the law. Our recent work includes:
- Helping secure safe drinking water for people whose water was contaminated with lead in Flint, Michigan; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Newark, New Jersey;
- Securing a settlement requiring industry to fund at least $187 million for the cleanup of mercury contamination in Maine’s Penobscot River;
- Halting illegal approvals for the Keystone XL pipeline;
- Securing the closure of a coal-fired power plant outside Peoria, Illinois, with a settlement of millions of dollars for job training, public health, and clean energy projects in the surrounding communities;
- Restoring and defending national monument protections, offshore drilling bans, and wildlife and endangered species protections;
- Battling unlawful rollbacks and agency inaction on clean water safeguards, fuel efficiency and energy efficiency standards, pesticides and toxics regulations, and government accountability rules; and
- Representing California communities in their efforts to clean up air pollution from Port of Los Angeles traffic and to stop hazardous waste mismanagement at a chemical manufacturing plant.
Winning a case and translating that victory into real-world results may take years, or even decades. It may involve intensive discovery, evidentiary hearings, or complex remedy implementation efforts. But we persist as long as it takes because we’re fighting for healthy people, healthy ecosystems, and a just, climate-resilient future.
Portfolio
Each year, NRDC hires third-year law school students and recent graduates who are committed to justice and interested in building litigation skills.
These four NRDC lawyers would finish each other’s thoughts—at any odd hour of the day or night—in their quest to help victims of the city’s lead crisis.
The Postal Service's disastrous decision to spend as much as $11.3 billion on polluting vehicles came from an opaque public process overseen by a Trump-era appointee, a deeply flawed analysis, and a clear bias against electric vehicles.
NRDC Chief Counsel Mitch Bernard takes on big polluters, climate deniers, and their powerful allies—including those who sit in the West Wing.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service unlawfully removed protections for gray wolves across the country.
An investigation by NRDC and our partners at the Southern Poverty Law Center reveals persistent and continuing drinking water and wastewater violations at the notorious Parchman prison in Mississippi.
The science shows that TCVP flea control products harm developing brains—yet the EPA is allowing them to stay on the market. So NRDC is taking the agency back to court.
As the E.D. Edwards plant closes, let’s celebrate the amazing work that Peoria-area groups have been doing to help residents recover from the plant’s harmful air pollution and transition to a cleaner energy future.
A judge has decided that the port put the profits of its tenant, China Shipping, above of the health of harbor workers and local residents.
After more than a half century of toxic mercury contamination, Maine’s longest river is finally getting cleaned up—a major win for the public interest over corporate polluters.