Americans Become Less Litigious as Frivolous ESA Litigation Quintuples
August 29, 2017 — The following was released by The Scope, a newsletter by the House Committee on Natural Resources:
According to recent polling from Public Opinion Strategies, 87% of voters agree that there are too many lawsuits filed in America. In fact, “Americans, reputed to be the most litigious people in the world, are filing far fewer lawsuits.” However, despite these developments, suits from fringe elements of the national environmental lobby are growing more rampant.
Here’s the good news: in 1993, 10 out of every 1,000 Americans filed a tort lawsuit. In 2015, that number declined to 2 out of 1,000 Americans filing suit. By contrast, environmental litigation, especially cases filed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), has experienced a sustained spike.
ESA has been abused by a small group of deep-pocketed special interest litigants to enforce their own policy preferences and to line the pockets of their attorneys and organizations. The ESA imposes no cap on attorneys’ fee awards that these special interest plaintiffs can recover from the federal government. The absence of such a cap was originally designed to ease the financial burden on citizens protecting themselves against federal actions. But when wealthy ideological groups repeatedly abuse the law in order to enrich themselves with taxpayers’ money, where do we draw the line?
As the Committee continues its work to improve and modernize the ESA, it’s a question worth asking.
Curtailing Species Recovery
ESA Litigation Cartel Fact #1: Two litigious environmental groups alone – WildEarth Guardians and Center for Biological Diversity – have filed over 1,500 lawsuits since 1990. That’s one new paralyzing lawsuit filed roughly every week over the past three decades from just two so-called “environmental” organizations.
Outcome: Valuable taxpayer resources are drained from actual species recovery – the very purpose of the ESA in the first place – to line the pockets of a few large-scale litigants.
Drowning Resources from the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)
ESA Litigation Cartel Fact #2: ESA-related sue-and-settle agreements quintupled during the Obama administration compared to previous administrations. In 2011, as part of a “mega-settlement” with the same two environmental groups, the FWS agreed to review over 250 species as well as actions impacting 1,053 species without public review or state input.
Outcome: Consequently, FWS devoted nearly all of its species petition and listing budget to comply with lawsuits, siphoning valuable taxpayer resources away from actual species recovery.
Costing the Taxpayer Millions
ESA Litigation Cartel Fact #3: Federal agencies have paid out $30 million for ESA-related litigation since 2009, and the Department of the Interior alone has shelled out $14 million on ESA-related attorney’s fees in the same time frame.
Outcome: Between 2009 and 2012, “sue and settle” agreements between environmental groups and the federal government resulted in over 100 new regulations with more than $100 million in annual compliance costs and – once again – more resources shifting away from actual species recovery.