The congressional effort to shed light on the influence of the nationally-coordinated climate litigation campaign against the U.S. energy industry within the federal judiciary has reached a new turning point, as Fox News reports.   

Republican leaders on the House Judiciary Committee — spearheaded by Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Courts Subcommittee Chairman Darrell Issa Darrell Issa (R-CA) — have now sent four formal letters to judicial organizations and climate litigation leaders requesting detailed information on communications and coordination of the controversial Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), a project of the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), and its attempt to present biased information to judges in order to sway their rulings in favor of the plaintiffs.  

The inquiries were directed to the Judicial Conference of the United States, the Federal Judicial Center, and two climate litigators — David Bookbinder of the Environmental Integrity Project and Roger Worthington of Worthington & Caron, P.C.  

The latest round of letters sent on January 14 builds directly on an earlier August 2025 oversight letter to ELI President Jordan Diamond, which accused ELI and its CJP of potentially attempting to “influence the impartiality of judges” in violation of judicial ethics norms, and sought extensive internal documents on funding, curricula, and judge participation going back to 2019.  

Together, the letters signal that lawmakers are no longer treating CJP as an isolated education effort, but as part of a broader climate lawfare infrastructure that’s led to more than a dozen climate lawsuits filed against the U.S. energy industry by states and municipalities across the country over the past decade.  

Judicial Institutions Under Scrutiny 

The Committee’s letter to the taxpayer-funded Federal Judicial Center (FJC) centers on whether the judiciary’s official education arm “may have coordinated with [ELI] and CJP on biased programming for federal judges.” 

An additional letter to the Director of the Judicial Conference of the United States and Administrative Office of U.S. Courts specifically highlights concerns about existing policies for meetings involving judges, and calls for updates to standards on judges’ participation in privately funded programs:  

“We look forward to engaging with the JCUS and AO to ensure that the Privately Funded Seminars Disclosure is updated to prevent abuse by advocacy organizations masquerading as fair and impartial educational programs, and to ensure that such programs are subjected to adequate scrutiny and oversight going forward.” 

The letter to the FJC also raises transparency questions about the Climate Judiciary Project’s programming, most notably that limited material is available for public review, and the material that is available appears designed to bias judges:  

“The limited portions of CJP’s ‘Climate Science and Law for Judges Curriculum’ that are publicly available seem designed to improperly influence judges in favor of plaintiffs. ELI has argued to judges that the political-question doctrine should have only ‘limited’ relevance in climate lawsuits …” 

CJP’s efforts to downplay the political question doctrine defense appears to mirror legal positions held by most climate plaintiffs, including California Attorney General Rob Bonta.  

It is also worth noting that another recipient of a letter from the committee, climate attorney David Bookbinder, directly compared climate tort cases to policy solutions, telling a Federalist Society panel this fall that climate nuisance suits were really an “indirect carbon tax.”    

Climate Litigators in the Loop 

The Committee’s letter to Bookbinder is among the most detailed and potentially consequential of the batch, raising questions about whether he coordinated with the CJP on judicial training materials while simultaneously representing climate plaintiffs in Boulder, Colorado.   

According to the letter, the Committee obtained documentation indicating Bookbinder had “pre-publication access” and provided “peer review” for materials prepared for ELI by Michael Gerrard – an academic who has been paid to support climate plaintiffs across the country – during the same period he was litigating Boulder’s climate lawsuit. 

Although Bookbinder has since said that he is no longer represents Boulder in an official capacity, he remains privy to the details of the case and the committee letter appears to suggest that the potential coordination occurred while he was still counsel. The stakes are heightened by the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering a petition seeking review of the case. 

A separate letter to Roger Worthington raises similar concerns. The committee alleges that Worthington’s firm, Worthington & Caron, “may have had pre-publication access” to ELI/CJP judicial training materials, including a climate-causation module, while the firm litigated climate lawsuits in federal court. 

The lawmakers point to a pre-publication module hosted on the firm’s website (with metadata and what the Committee characterizes as peer-review style comments) as the main cause of concern: 

“Worthington & Caron having pre-publication access to judicial training modules raises significant concerns regarding potential improper ex parte contact with judges as well as calling into question the veracity of representations that ELI has made to the Committee about CJP’s contact and engagement with parties in litigation.” 

Worthington’s conduct has drawn scrutiny before. In the Multnomah County climate case, a federal judge rebuked his firm for failing to disclose that a scientific study cited in court filings was partially funded by Worthington himself, calling the omission “not acceptable” in complex, well-funded litigation. 

What’s Next  

While the House Oversight Committee examines CJP and ELI, that scrutiny continues to unfold alongside parallel investigations into Bloomberg SAAGs in state AG offices that are used to advance climate cases, as well as the role of contingency-fee and dark-money law firms such as Sher Edling in coordinating and financing these cases. 

These oversight efforts, alongside the recent letters sent by the House Judiciary Committee, show that the spotlight continues to shine brighter on the network of organizations that are attempting to influence taxpayer-funded offices and judges to tilt the scales in favor of the climate litigation campaign.