Court Rules Trump Administration’s Secret “Climate Working Group” Violated Federal Law

(Washington, D.C. – January 30, 2026) The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a judgment today declaring that the Trump administration violated federal law when it secretly formed the “Climate Working Group” (CWG) and tasked it with writing a dangerously slanted report that the administration then used as the basis of its proposal to overturn the Endangerment Finding.  

The court’s judgment states that the “violations are now established as a matter of law” with regard to the U.S. Department of Energy, Secretary of Energy Wright, and the Climate Working Group pursuant to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).  

The court further declared that the “Climate Working Group was a Federal Advisory Committee, and not merely ‘assembled to exchange facts or information,’ but rather provided substantive policy ‘advice and recommendations’ to the Department of Energy.”  

“The federal court’s ruling is absolutely clear – the Trump Administration violated federal law by secretly convening a group tasked with developing a dangerously slanted report to use as the basis for attacking the Endangerment Finding, the long-standing determination that climate pollution endangers our health and our lives and requires commonsense action,” said Erin Murphy, Senior Attorney for Environmental Defense Fund. “The Trump EPA must immediately withdraw its fundamentally unlawful and forever tainted proposal to repeal the Endangerment Finding, which would impose high costs on the American people who are already experiencing the impacts of pollution-fueled fires, flooding, higher insurance costs, and rising energy costs.”   

“The court confirmed today that the process for this sham report, which was conducted in secret by five known climate contrarians, violated the law,” said Dr. Gretchen Goldman, President and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The public deserves transparent climate policy decisions rooted in the best available science advice from credible experts. UCS will continue to denounce the thoroughly debunked, illegally created, propaganda report that remains available on U.S. government websites as any reliance on it could be a further danger to people across the country.”  

Last year, Secretary Wright secretly arranged for five hand-picked climate action opponents to form the CWG and tasked them with writing a report challenging the overwhelming scientific consensus underpinning the Endangerment Finding. That report was kept secret until it was unveiled as part of Trump administration’s proposal to overturn the Endangerment Finding. The proposal relies extensively on the CWG's report, citing it 22 times. Almost immediately after the report was released, a group of more than 85 scientists issued a scathing rebuttal outlining the report’s numerous flaws.  

Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists filed a lawsuit alleging that the creation of the CWG violated FACA – a law passed by Congress after Nixon-era scandals, which states that federal government advisory committees cannot form or operate in secret, requires that they have fairly balanced membership, and mandates that materials created by an advisory group must be available to the public. Today the court agreed. 

As shown by records that the government disclosed in response to an earlier court order – documents that were released publicly last week by EDF and UCS — DOE political officials coordinated with EPA and the CWG to develop the group’s report to support EPA’s attack on the Endangerment Finding:   

• On April 24, 2025, a DOE political appointee emailed the CWG members, stating: “I’ll update you all as soon as we get a new (interim/rushed) deadline from EPA … Wright and Zeldin are traveling together today, so we should have an answer soon.” (16021)
• On the same day, the political official emailed saying “we have renewed buy-in that EPA will wait for this work and include it in its rulemaking …  [A CWG member] suggested we increase our coordination with EPA, particularly the legal team drafting the rulemaking. If you want to be included in those conversations, please let me know.” (16025)  

The records also show that DOE Trump Administration officials explicitly charged the CWG with focusing on the EPA Endangerment Finding, and CWG members discussed law and policy:   

• A DOE political official told CWG members in an email on April 19: “The exact charge for you all is to provide an update on the science relevant to the EPA’s endangerment determination with respect to GHGs” and “the EPA team asked that the document be DOE-branded.” (17144)
• On April 14, 2025, a DOE political appointee emailed the CWG members to share excerpts from Clean Air Act Sections 202(a)(1), 302(g), and 302(h) as “the areas of inquiry that are most relevant to the policymaking process” to help the CWG with “targeting your work.” (17067). These are the statutory provisions under which the Endangerment Finding was made. 
• On April 21, 2025, one CWG member circulated an essay by an industry-funded climate skeptic and described it as a “good explanation of why the Admin may want to move on the [Endangerment Finding] without a science paper …  It is more complex to argue that the science since 2010 invalidates the original EF.” (17278)  

The citation numbers provided above in parentheses correspond to the records numbers at the bottom right corner of all documents contained in the linked PDFs, which are text searchable.