Congressional Democrats have urged an arm of the federal court system to restore a climate science chapter to a judicial education manual, calling the decision to pull the material an “unconscionable” capitulation to “right-wing pressure.”
Led by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the Friday letter to the Federal Judicial Center said erasing the chapter “sends a clear and chilling message that the federal judiciary is susceptible to partisan political pressure.”
The letter comes two weeks after the center removed the climate chapter from its latest Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, following complaints from a coalition of Republican attorneys general who said the chapter was biased against the fossil fuel industry.
Lawmakers wrote their letter to Judge Robin Rosenberg, an Obama appointee to a federal court in Florida and the judicial center’s director, saying the push was part of a broader campaign by polluters to equate climate denial to climate science.
