On April 14, 2025, Sierra Club and a group of environmental and science organizations filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s removal of critical public information from climate and environmental justice federal agency websites. Within days of taking office, the Trump administration began deleting climate change and environmental justice data and tools from agency websites and taking actions to undermine related efforts across the federal government.
The lawsuit challenges the Trump administration’s removal of several critical environmental justice tools like EJScreen, a flagship tool for examining and understanding cumulative impacts and environmental injustice across the country, the Climate and Environmental Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), the Low-Income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) Tool and Community Benefits Plan Map, the Equitable Transportation Community (ETC) Explorer, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Future Risk Index. Until the deletion, these websites were widely used by advocates, regulators, and academics to identify communities disproportionately affected by pollution and climate change. The vital tools also track burdens related to energy, health, housing, legacy pollution, transportation, water and wastewater, and workforce development.
Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program led the coalition effort to bring the lawsuit and worked with multiple campaigns and volunteer teams worked with multiple internal stakeholders to draft case documents describing how Sierra Club staff and volunteers regularly use these tools to educate and advocate for policies or agency actions that would address the disproportionate harm overburdened communities bear. Some examples include reports on proposed gas pipeline projects, identifying disproportionate energy burdens in states like Texas or Louisiana, long-form reporting on the environmental impacts of online retail shipping practices, the Sierra Club’s LNG tracker, and comments in Clean Air Act rulemakings.
Sierra Club is represented by Environmental Law Program Senior Attorney Andrea Issod and Associate Attorney Joya Manjur, and all groups are represented by Public Citizen.