House Republicans are renewing their scrutiny of legal fees paid by the federal government to environmental groups that sue agencies.
The House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations is planning a hearing Wednesday titled, “The Profit Engine Driving Environmental Nonprofits,” with an eye specifically to fees paid under the Endangered Species Act and the Equal Access to Justice Act when a group’s lawsuit is successful.
Those laws’ fee-shifting provisions were meant to combat federal government wrongdoing, but green groups “have built a business model of siphoning taxpayer dollars by weaponizing environmental statutory fee-shifting provisions, settling vexatious lawsuits that sometimes include additional grants, and fundraising off all these efforts,” the subcommittee wrote in a memo.
The panel is also skeptical of how attorneys’ fees are set, saying the environmental groups themselves have significant leeway in how to calculate them.
