Ecology in the Courts
- Jun 22
- 10 min read
How Litigation Has Empowered Grassroots Environmentalism
Picture yourself on a trail on Storm King Mountain in upstate New York. After scampering over rocks, you stop to admire the oaks that grace the landscape. Departing from the trailhead in the morning, you ascend toward the summit through a thick blanket of fog until you reach its cliffs. At the occasional clearing, you marvel at the awesome view of the Hudson River Valley below, looking much like it did 1,000 years ago.
The mountain and its surrounding area offer a breathtaking escape from New York City, only 60 miles south.
A product of natural forces eons in the making, its current tranquility and beauty also owe their existence to a unique instance of human conservation: This mountain was the focus of a landmark lawsuit, Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, filed by environmentalists after utility giant Consolidated Edison made plans to build a huge hydroelectric plant on the Hudson River close to Storm King Mountain.
The victory of the Preservation Conference dramatically altered the way in which conservationists could challenge undesirable projects and led to many more legal wins against companies and others who wanted to harness energy at the expense of beautiful and pristine environments.
Environmentalists’ Legal Power Emerges
The Scenic Hudson case started in 1962, after local conservationists learned of Con Ed’s plans for a power plant at Storm King Mountain in a New York Times article.
According to the Times’ September 27 article, Con Ed’s chairman told a news conference that, after studying the river for 20 years, they saw a way to use technological advancements to bring more electricity to the burgeoning downstream population—all without disrupting river traffic. The Times’ article included a schematic drawing of what was planned.
Conservationists, backed by nearby towns and villages, opposed the project, saying that it would cause irreparable environmental and aesthetic harm. Their lawsuit lasted for 17 years and concluded in 1980, when Con Edison abandoned the project.
Scenic Hudson … ruled that regulatory agencies should evaluate projects not just on their economics, but on environmental values.
This was the first time conservationists were given so-called “legal standing” to oppose an infrastructure project not on their land. For more than 40 years, legal action has continued and expanded its scope, as society grapples to stop man-made pollution and other forms of environmental mismanagement while governments, utilities, and corporations try to fill the energy needs of growing populations.
The Ripple Effects of Scenic Hudson
Scenic Hudson ruled that citizens who enjoyed a natural landscape for recreational and aesthetic reasons had a legitimate role in challenging certain projects, even if they did not own specific parcels of property that would be impacted.
The case further set the legal precedent that regulatory agencies should evaluate projects not just on their economics but on environmental values.
Additionally, the federal government passed legislation using the same logic. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as well as the Clean Air Act (1970) and the Clean Water Act (1972), reflected the philosophy that regulatory agencies must conduct rigorous review and consideration of the environmental impact of projects applying for regulatory approval.
Environmental litigation—especially in the US—has proliferated since Scenic Hudson.
In 2009, Prof. Michael Gerrard of Columbia Law School founded the Climate Litigation Database, an online resource that tracks these types of lawsuits worldwide. According to Gerrard, more than 3,000 cases have been filed worldwide as of June 30, 2025—more than 65% (1,986) in the US.
The cases have had a powerful impact on environmentalism and conservation nationally and globally. For example, in the 1940s, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began tapping into Mono Lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada. Over the years, as the waters began to dry up, the lake and its surrounding ecosystems became badly degraded.
A lawsuit was brought, and in the 1983 case of National Audubon Society v. Superior Court, the California Supreme Court came to the rescue of Mono Lake. The case is considered significant by legal experts because of its unique interpretation of the so-called Public Trust Doctrine, which holds that the state owns and is responsible for protecting certain natural and cultural resources for the benefit of the public. The court ruled that the state must consider the doctrine in allocating water rights, by balancing them with ecological considerations. Subsequently, Los Angeles was ordered to reduce its diversions until lake water levels reached acceptable levels.
Young Conservationists in Court
More than 40 years after the conclusion of Scenic Hudson and Audubon, significant environmental litigation continued with a younger generation of plaintiffs. In Montana in 2020, a nonprofit, public-interest law firm, Our Children’s Trust, filed a lawsuit on behalf of 16 Montana youths who believed the pristine resource of the air was threatened by emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The plaintiffs in Held v. Montana argued that the state’s support of the fossil fuel industry had worsened the effects of climate change and denied the youths’ rights to clean air that were granted to them in the state’s constitution.
A district court decided in favor of the youths, ruling that the recently amended Montana Environmental Policy Act violated the state’s constitution. More specifically, it ruled that the state had violated the youths’ constitutional “right to a clean and healthful environment.” The state’s Supreme Court upheld the ruling.
The ruling in Held is considered significant by legal scholars because it is the first case to successfully challenge the effects of climate change on constitutional grounds. The ruling put states on notice that they cannot ignore the effects of climate change, and it opened the door for legal challenges in other states that have similar environmental protections in their constitutions.
The Social Injustice of Environmental Harm
Sheila Foster is a professor at Columbia University’s Climate School and at the Columbia University Law School and specializes in environmental and climate justice. She told The Earth & I that the United States has a “very good system of conservation,” but that unfortunately the benefits of that system are not distributed equally, and “many communities are not protected.”
That often leads to disparities between racial communities, although the divide runs deeper, she said. She explained that environmental justice in the US is as much about class as it is about race. Families on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum—regardless of whether they are white, black, or Hispanic—have fewer housing options and that, while they may live in neighborhoods that are more affordable, the areas may also be in proximity to sources of industrial pollution. “How you talk about environmental justice,” Foster said, “depends on where you live.”
On the positive side, this history of environmental injustice has also encouraged a movement to oppose such disparities. In the book From the Ground Up, Foster and coauthor Luke Cole describe how many of these communities have fought back, using grassroots activism coupled with litigation to stop corporate polluters and the harm they cause.
The book describes Kettleman City, a tiny farmworker community in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where 95% of the residents are Latino. It is also home to one of the largest toxic waste dumps in the country, owned by Chemical Waste Management, about three and a half miles from the town.
In 1988, the company applied to build an incinerator on the site. Residents mobilized and attended hearings to protest the facility. Their protests were ignored, and the local planning commission, followed by the county board of supervisors, approved the project.
Then residents went to court, where their concerns were finally acknowledged. A judge ruled that the project’s Environmental Impact Report did not adequately address the impact on air quality and agriculture. The judge also ruled that residents had not been meaningfully included in the permitting process. Eventually, the company withdrew the project.
The Pendulum Swings
As is the case with all social issues, opinions on environmental litigation vary, legal interpretations diverge, and the trajectory of progress is inextricably linked to the vicissitudes of national politics.
John Dernbach, Commonwealth Professor of Environmental Law and Sustainability at Widener University’s Commonwealth Law School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has written extensively about environmental litigation. Dernbach told The Earth & I that, when it comes to judicial decisions, logic can vary, and a ruling in one case that favors conservationists does not guarantee that another court will rule in a similar fashion. “Different courts employ different reasoning,” he explained, adding, “The facts of the case also matter.”
While environmental litigation may face hurdles at the federal level, there are still opportunities for success. Most of these are at state level.
The US Supreme Court has ruled unfavorably on environmental litigation in a number of significant cases. However, while environmental litigation may face hurdles at the federal level, there are still opportunities for success. Most of these are at state level.
In an interview with The Earth & I, Gerrard, of Columbia, explained that “states are able to impose stronger environmental laws than the federal government.” For example, he noted that 30 states have adopted renewable energy standards. States have also adopted requirements for the cleanup of hazardous waste. “The law is clear that states have power,” he said.
Environmental Litigation Abroad
While environmental litigation has a strong legacy in the US and Europe, it is far less prevalent in developing countries.
The UN Environment Programme says that, as of June 2025, there were 3,099 climate-related lawsuits filed around the world, but fewer than 10% of them were in the Global South. Nonetheless, there have been some powerful legal developments in emerging economies.
In 2023, for example, a case was brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, The Netherlands, concerning climate change. Also known as the World Court, this is the judicial body of the United Nations. The case was brought by a group of countries led by Vanuatu, a small, low-lying Pacific island nation especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including multiple catastrophic cyclones. Reasoning that global warming is caused largely by emissions from other, more industrialized countries, it petitioned to have its arguments considered.
In 2025, the ICJ issued a landmark ruling in the case, “Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change” (Case No. 187). The 15 justices unanimously agreed that the nations of the world are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions and can be held accountable for damages. While the ruling is advisory, it sets a precedent of holding nations accountable for their emissions and could influence legal reasoning in other proceedings.
Among other environmental efforts, remarkable legal strategies to clean up river basins have also been undertaken in countries like Egypt and India.
In Egypt, the legendary Nile River became polluted by industrial dumping, agricultural drainage, and unlicensed shoreline construction. But because there are so many governmental “owners” of the shoreline, legal accountability had been diluted to near zero. But then Parliament swept away the bureaucratic paralysis and enacted Law No. 147 (the Water Resources Law) in 2021, which strongly unified and gave new power to the state’s legal mechanisms. It unsiloed the Ministries of Water Resources, Interior, Environment, and Justice.
The law made it a major criminal offense—not just a code violation—to discharge industrial or toxic agricultural waste into the Nile, its vast network of irrigation canals, or its tributaries. The new statute empowered the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency to impose large fines of up to about $10,000 per violation, mandate immediate factory shutdowns, and bring charges against corporate executives directly for criminal jail time. Instead of waiting for slow civil litigation to unfold, the government now conducts broad enforcement sweeps.
The High Court of Uttarakhand declared the Ganges and Yamuna rivers—and all their tributaries—as “legal and living entities having the status of a legal person.”
Meanwhile, in India, industrial and metropolitan polluters have flouted national cleanup mandates for decades, pouring toxic waste and raw sewage into the Ganges River, which is sacred to Hindus. Finally, however, in a landmark ruling (Mohd. Salim v. State of Uttarakhand), the High Court of Uttarakhand declared the Ganges and Yamuna rivers—and all their tributaries—as “legal and living entities having the status of a legal person.”
By granting the river the same legal rights as a human being, the court sought to allow environmental advocates to sue polluting corporations or negligent municipalities on behalf of the river itself for bodily harm. The court appointed top state officials to act as the river’s legal guardians.
The ruling touched off an explosion of debate and is now still in the appeals process. However, the High Court’s judicial rationale fundamentally transformed Indian environmental law. The National Green Tribunal and the State Pollution Control Boards have now been emboldened to issue direct, heavy financial penalties and immediate-closure orders to hundreds of noncompliant tanneries and chemical plants in the rivers’ basin.
The Industry Perspective
Industry groups often argue that some environmental lawsuits—while legally permissible—can become counterproductive when they are used primarily to delay or block projects rather than to address serious environmental harm.
“Litigation plays a critical role in enforcing laws and protecting environmental standards,” American Council for Capital Formation Chief Economist Pinar Çebi Wilber told Daily Energy Insider. “However, when litigation becomes a substitute for policymaking, it can introduce significant uncertainty into investment decisions and delay the development of infrastructure that is essential for economic growth and energy security.”
Industry advocates also argue that some lawsuits are driven less by broad environmental concerns than by local opposition movements (“Not In My Backyard” or NIMBY activism), political agendas, or attempts to extract financial settlements.
Business organizations often say this creates a climate in which nearly any major project becomes vulnerable to costly delays regardless of its overall public benefit.
Environmental groups say that what industry often labels “frivolous” lawsuits are often essential accountability tools, especially when government agencies fail to enforce regulations or when communities lack political power. They argue that litigation can force transparency, improve project design, protect public health, and preserve ecosystems that might otherwise be sacrificed for short-term economic gain.
Thanks to Scenic Hudson, the debate has ended on whether conservation groups can have a legal voice in projects that affect the environment. Today, litigation revolves around how to balance environmental protection, democratic participation, economic development, and the need for timely decision-making.
*Richard Laezman is a freelance writer in Los Angeles, California. He has a passion for energy efficiency and innovation. He has been covering renewable power and other related subjects for more than ten years.
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