Environmental Law

Environmental Law Program

Environmental Law Program

The Environmental Law Program uses strategic legal campaigns to fight climate change, to protect clean air, water and wilderness, and to promote justice for communities threatened by pollution.


In the past year alone, we launched more than 200 legal actions to challenge the fossil fuel industry's destructive effects on our air, water, and climate.

About Our Program

Our team of top-notch attorneys and legal staff leverages all of the Club's tools of democracy, integrating legal advocacy with grassroots organizing, sophisticated communications, a state-of-the-art digital strategies team, and administrative lobbying.

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Support the Environmental Law Program

We pair litigation with effective community organizing and strong local communications to build genuine, informed support from community members and government officials.

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Sierra Club ELP in Lake Tahoe

Our Staff

We are a team of professional attorneys and staff who combine sophisticated legal tactics with a commitment to social and environmental justice at the grassroots level. We pair litigation with effective community organizing and strong local communications to build genuine, informed support from community members and government officials, making courtroom victories sustainable over the long term.

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August 12, 2022

Great Falls, MT – A federal judge in Montana District Court ruled today to reinstate a moratorium halting all coal leasing on federal lands until the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) completes a more sufficient environmental analysis.  

August 11, 2022

Conservation groups and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management have finalized a legal agreement that will prevent new oil and gas leasing across 2.2 million acres of southwestern Colorado until the agency supplements its environmental analysis and…

July 19, 2022

Today, Sierra Club, along with HealthyGulf, filed a lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers for issuing a Clean Water Act section 404 “dredge and fill” permit for the Driftwood LNG fracked gas export terminal proposed for construction in…

July 5, 2022

Today, in a win for wildlife protection and conservation, a federal district court restored comprehensive Endangered Species Act regulatory protections to hundreds of species and the places they call home. The Services filed a voluntary remand…

July 1, 2022

WASHINGTON, DC -- Yesterday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was officially sworn in as the newest Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Justice Jackson was confirmed by a bipartisan Senate vote in April and is the first Black woman to be nominated…

10M+

acres of wilderness protected

200+

lawsuits filed to resist Trump

1K+

miles of dirty fuel pipelines blocked

382

coal plants retired