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Outlet profile

Earthjustice

U.S. left-leaning environmental advocacy nonprofit (public-interest law firm)

Owned byIndependent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, governed by a board of trustees. It has no corporate or individual owner. It was formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund and has always been legally separate from the Sierra Club.
FundingMostly charitable donations. Sources include foundation grants, major donors, and individual members. It does not run advertising and does not charge its clients for legal work. Its annual report (fiscal year 2025) is the best source for current figures.
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

Phil Berry, Fred Fisher, and Don Harris founded Earthjustice in 1971 as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. It was modeled on the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, with early support from the Ford Foundation. Its first major case concerned Mineral King Valley in California's Sierra Nevada. It renamed itself Earthjustice in 1997. It stayed legally separate from the Sierra Club, which is one of the many groups it represents in court. In 2000 it merged with Earthlaw, a Colorado-based environmental law group. It takes cases for free on behalf of clients such as environmental, community, tribal, and health groups. Its website, press releases, and articles are advocacy communications written to support those cases and its policy goals. Earthjustice says it opened 115 legal actions against the Trump administration in the first nine months of the second term, nearly triple the number in the same period of the first term. These include suits over frozen or terminated federal grants, EV charging funds, and EPA programs. Its coverage generally frames administration environmental rollbacks as unlawful or harmful and highlights its own court wins. Critics on the right, such as the Influence Watch profile, describe it as a left-leaning activist litigator. Supporters see it as a public-interest law group that enforces existing environmental laws.

Sources

  1. Our Lawsuits Against the Trump Administration - Earthjustice
  2. Annual Report Fiscal Year 2025 - Earthjustice
  3. The Founders of Earthjustice
  4. Earthjustice - Wikipedia
  5. Earthjustice - Influence Watch
  6. Earthlaw to Unite with Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund

Profile compiled 2026-10-15; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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