Court Rules Secret Group That Wrote “Climate Science Report” is Not Exempt from Federal Law

(September 17, 2025) A federal court ruled today that a secretly convened anti-climate group is not exempt from the Federal Advisory Committee Act as the Trump administration had claimed, granting in part a motion by Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists for summary judgment. 

The Trump administration’s “Climate Working Group” created a widely discredited report that is at the center of its attempt to undo EPA’s Endangerment Finding – the determination, based on mountains of scientific evidence, that climate pollution harms people’s health and well-being. 

EDF and UCS filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against Energy Secretary Christopher Wright, the Department of Energy, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and the Environmental Protection Agency saying that violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The Trump administration argued that the Climate Working Group was subject to an exception from the act, but today the court rejected that claim, stating in its order:

• “This Court rules that the Climate Working Group was not assembled to ‘exchange facts or information’ in a manner that would bring it into the claimed exception.”
• “The conclusion of the report itself shows that it is no mere ‘review’ of the literature. To suggest otherwise borders on sophistry.”
• ”No reasonable jury could find that these words, arranged as they are, do not constitute advice or recommendations for a renewed approach to climate policy.” 

“The court rejected the government's sole argument for why the Trump Administration’s hand-picked and secretly-convened group, and its deeply flawed report, is exempt from the Federal Advisory Committee Act,” said Erin Murphy, EDF Senior Attorney. “The law requires that such advisory committees act with transparency, public participation, and consideration of balanced perspectives. Secretary Wright unlawfully formed, in secret, a group of climate skeptics to write a report filled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations about climate change — and EPA Administrator Zeldin is trying to use it to undermine commonsense pollution limits on the largest industrial emitters.” 

The Climate Working Group’s report has been denounced by scientists whose research it cites for using scientific data inaccurately and fundamentally misrepresenting many of their findings. More than 85 scientists issued a scathing rebuttal to the report. Scientists at EDF and UCS experts also filed comments with the Department of Energy further detailing the numerous, severe, and pervasive problems with the Climate Working Group report. And according to a report released today by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the evidence that human-caused greenhouse gases harm people’s health and wellbeing is beyond scientific dispute and has only strengthened since EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding.

“Today’s ruling makes clear the government’s arguments don’t pass muster. The claim that the DOE’s Climate Working Group report was a mere literature review is patently untrue as it clearly offered advice and recommendations on climate policy,” said UCS President and CEO Dr. Gretchen Goldman. “Today, the NAS affirmed the undeniable facts on climate science, which contrast sharply with the disinformation and denial in the CWG report. People across the nation need our government to rely on this kind of credible, trusted science rather than sham findings hastily produced through an unlawful and secretive process.”

On September 4, the Trump administration filed a letter and affidavit with the court saying the Climate Working Group has been disbanded, and arguing that makes the lawsuit moot. However members of the committee are still publicly saying that they are continuing to work.

The court today also denied EDF and UCS’s request for a preliminary injunction, which means the case will move forward on the merits.

The next court hearing will be this Tuesday, September 23, 2025.