Despite Law, Trump DOJ Wants To Sideline Citizens In Pollution Fights [1]
"In a court filing backing Elon Musk’s AI company, the Trump administration said the federal government can stop Americans from suing over air pollution."
"The Trump administration is making the case that the federal government can quash citizen Clean Air Act lawsuits against polluters, a move environmental lawyers warn would rewrite decades of enforcement law.
If successful, the argument, made by the Department of Justice in a court filing supporting Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, would dramatically undermine the power of U.S. residents to fight pollution at tens of thousands of industrial sites across the country.
“It would be a pretty sweeping change in the way enforcement works for the federal pollution control statutes,” said Tom Mariani, former chief of environmental enforcement at DOJ.
The Clean Air Act allows citizens and environmental groups to sue alleged polluters. Typically, the federal government or a state can move to intervene if it has plans to step in and take over enforcement of the case. The act itself only limits citizen suits once the government has “commenced and is diligently prosecuting a civil action.”"