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Hundreds of Lawyers Are Gathering in Washington to Plot a Way to Save Biden’s Climate Agenda

D.C.’s environmental groups are preparing for an onslaught of lawsuits from conservatives targeting the president’s most aggressive climate regulations.

Joe Biden
The Biden administration finalized a record-breaking number of rules over the last several months, many of them structured to address climate change. Susan Walsh/AP

Environmental groups know President Joe Biden’s climate agenda is under attack, and they’re sending their lawyers to strategize how to defend it.

Attorneys for the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, among others, are convening at Earthjustice’s Washington, D.C., offices this week to coordinate against an onslaught of lawsuits challenging recent Biden administration rules aimed at promoting the clean energy transition.

“We’re going to defend this important regulatory agenda that Biden has delivered over the last several months against industry attacks,” Earthjustice’s Sambhav Sankar told NOTUS. The group has more than 200 attorneys and more than 500 additional staffers working to protect environmental regulations — a 40% increase in size that occurred mostly over the course of the Trump administration.