Probe alleges education campaign sought to influence how courts approach climate litigation
A new report from the House Judiciary Committee is alleging that a major environmental organization—the Environmental Law Institute and its Climate Judiciary Project—has used judicial education programs not so much to inform judges about climate science but to manipulate and exaggerate climate claims to influence how federal and state judges approach upcoming litigation.
The bombshell report says the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) deliberately focused its seminars on judges in jurisdictions likely to produce climate-related lawsuits, presented disputed questions involving climate attribution and causation as settled science, and lacked a conflict-of-interest policy for working with scientists and advocates connected to the climate-litigation movement.
Since August 2025, the House Judiciary Committee and its Courts subcommittee have investigated the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) project, reviewing more than 15,000 pages of documents and taking testimony from people involved with the initiative. The committee says its goal has been to establish the scope of what it says are radical environmentalists’ efforts to indoctrinate and bias judges.
CJP was founded in 2018 by Dr. Paul Hanle under the Environmental Law Institute and describes its mission as providing judges with neutral, objective information about climate science relevant to litigation. By November 2025, it had provided materials or information to more than 2,000 state and federal judges, while at least 140 federal judges had attended its training sessions.
However, the House committee contends that the documentary record tells a different story from CJP’s stated neutrality.
“These judges are from regions where CJP anticipates a growing volume of climate-related cases,” the report states. “When a climate event occurs, such as a drought or wildfire, oftentimes plaintiffs bring legal claims in an attempt to recoup damages caused by the climate event. When selecting a location for a judicial ‘education’ seminar, CJP looks for areas ‘where climate impacts would be significant’ because it expects an increase in cases in those areas.”
In one instance, the committee alleges, Dr. Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a contributor to CJP, shared a nonpublic draft of a judicial training module on attribution science (which assesses the role climate change played in particular events or impacts) with attorney Roger Worthington, who served as lead counsel for Multnomah County, Oregon, in its multibillion-dollar climate lawsuit against energy producers.
“In other words, a lawyer with an active dispute before the federal courts had prepublication access to a training module that was meant to influence judges about the very subject matter at issue in his case,” the committee alleged.
You’re Special…For a Reason
The committee’s bottom line is that CJP did not merely offer general education to the judiciary—education that was biased in and of itself, the committee asserted—but sought to reach and manipulate a targeted orbit of judges in places it believed ripe for environmental litigation.
In the report, House investigators cited internal communications discussing efforts to reach those “key judges.”
“For example, on May 12, 2022, Dr. Hanle wrote to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) scientist Dr. Michael Wehner, an academic focusing on applied mathematics and computational research, to discuss Dr. Hanle’s efforts at CJP,” the report stated. “Dr. Hanle introduced Dr. Wehner to the goal of CJP, writing: ‘I’d like to tell you how we are going about reaching key judges, and I have a specific idea about attribution for your consideration that could make a great difference in the final outcome of cases.’”
Hanle had contacted Wehner because he was seeking a scientist who specialized in attribution science who could provide input on the content of a CJP module about attribution, the report revealed. Most important, that was about a year before the committee alleges that Whener himself slipped the nonpublic draft of the training model to the Multnomah County, Oregon, counsel.
And CJP wasn’t just knee-deep on the advocacy side of litigation; its other efforts were simultaneously homing in on the judges many were likely to appear before.
“CJP partners with judicial institutions, including the Federal Judicial Center (FJC), to expand its reach within the judiciary for education seminars,” the report stated. “… During his transcribed interview with the Committee and Subcommittee, Dr. Hanle asserted that FJC was the only organization ‘charged with inviting the judges.’ However, according to internal documents, CJP leadership communicated with individuals and organizations involved in or who support climate litigation to discuss how to use ‘back-channel efforts’ to target states and key judges for upcoming climate-related judicial seminars.”
Other correspondence described another ‘back-channel effort’ to get one or more Supreme Court justices to attend a seminar, the report alleges.
Hanle testified that CJP sought to provide judges with “context and tools” for evaluating climate evidence and to educate judges who doubted that climate change was human caused. But the committee points to Hanle’s private correspondence as evidence that he viewed the seminars as actually capable of affecting litigation outcomes.
“In private emails to aligned academics, Dr. Hanle bragged about CJP’s success in persuading judges to accept unsettled matters of climate science and even admitted that CJP’s efforts would ‘make a great difference in the final outcome of cases,’” the committee stated. “CJP documents make clear that it seeks to influence litigation outcomes because “real government action [on climate change] might still be derived from court decisions.”
For its part, ELI has defended its seminars by asserting that “CJP does not participate in litigation, support or coordinate with any parties related to any litigation, or advise judges on how they should rule on any issue or in any case.”
Still, the committee report stated that documents show the group coordinates with individuals and organizations with close ties to climate litigation, such as the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, an environmental law research institute at Columbia Law School.
“The Sabin Center actively works to shape ‘the evolving field of climate litigation through research, documentation, and analysis of how courts worldwide are responding to the climate crisis,’” the report states. “The Center supports the work of CJP by providing guest speakers and content for seminars. The Sabin Center’s founder and director, Michael Gerrard, even serves on the CJP’s Advisory Committee.”
The report also raises conflict-of-interest concerns. According to investigators, CJP has no formal conflict-of-interest policy to ensure that curriculum writers or seminar presenters are not involved in climate litigation that could come before participating judges.
Settled Science
Not least, the committee contends that CJP presents contested propositions involving attribution and causation as settled scientific conclusions. That matters because attribution can become crucial when plaintiffs attempt to connect an alleged injury to the conduct of particular defendants.
“CJP claims to provide neutral, unbiased education to help judges make more informed decisions in the courtroom,” the report states. “However, evidence shows that CJP presents disputed scientific theories as fact, promoting a biased evidentiary framework for climate litigation. CJP argues that it offers a ‘consensus’ perspective on the theory that human greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming and exacerbate extreme weather events; however, the science is far from settled.”
Hanle, the CJP founder, testified that CJP was justified in promoting disputed theories as fact because “the vast majority of—overwhelming majority of climate scientists—understand that climate change is real, human caused, caused largely by greenhouse gas emissions,” the report stated.
Explaining climate science—its basis and understanding—is the goal of training, Hanle testified: “And one of the consequences of all of that is that they would see that climate change is what I just said—real, human caused.”
In an email to a CJP Curriculum Advisory Council member, the report continued, Hanle boasted about the seminars’ effectiveness in persuading judges on such matters. He wrote, “One judge let us know that he had begun as a skeptic about the effects on health but was turned around by your presentation. What a great validation of your presentation . . . and the project!”
The report ultimately depicts the controversy as one of judicial integrity, pointing to federal recusal law and the Judicial Code of Conduct requirement that judges avoid extrajudicial activities that could undermine—or create the appearance of undermining—their impartiality. Federal law requires a federal justice, judge or magistrate judge to disqualify himself from a proceeding when his impartiality “might reasonably be questioned.”
America’s system of justice is built on the foundation of a fair and unbiased judiciary, the report concludes.
“To preserve fundamental American liberty, the judicial branch must remain free from partisan politics and avoid impermissible indoctrination from ideological special interests,” the report states. “The actions of ELI and CJP in corrupting judicial training seminars with the express purpose of affecting the outcome of litigation serves as a stark warning to the federal court system. The Committee and the Subcommittee will continue its oversight to preserve the independence and neutrality of the judicial branch.”
The report thus makes one thing crystal clear, though it should not be necessary to do so: A litigant should enter court facing a neutral judge, not one who has already been indoctrinated about the dispute through a framework developed by interests aligned with the other side.
