Conservation groups have filed suit against the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump after the government rolled back the definition of “harm” in the Endangered Species Act.
“Preventing harm to wildlife by protecting where they live, eat, and sleep is a basic foundation of the Endangered Species Act,” Kristen Boyles, the managing attorney of Earthjustice's Northwest Regional Office, said in a release. “The Trump administration repeal violates the core language of the statute and decades of legal precedent, including from the U.S. Supreme Court. Now more than ever, imperiled fish, birds, and wildlife need protection to survive and recover.”
On 10 July, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that it was repealing the roughly 50-year-old definition of harm used by the government to protect endangered species, citing 2024 Supreme Court case Loper Bright v. Raimondo as justification. That Supreme Court case involved commercial fishers challenging a rule requiring them to pay for observers out of pocket, and the justices used the lawsuit to limit the wide latitude federal agencies had been given for decades to interpret congressional statutes. In its announcement, the Department of the Interior said the definition of harm being used by the government was exactly the type of agency overreach that the justices were pushing back against.
However, conservation advocates argued the change in definition severely limits the ability of the ESA to protect endangered animals, such as several species of salmon.
“The purpose of the Endangered Species Act is not only to protect threatened and endangered species but to protect the very ecosystems they need to survive,” Conservation Law Foundation Associate Attorney Sarah Shahabi said in a release. “This unlawful rule guts longstanding protections and allows for the destruction of habitat to such an extent that vulnerable species like Atlantic salmon will be pushed closer to extinction.”
U.S. Representative Jared Huffman (D-California), who is also the House Natural Resources Committee's Ranking Member, denounced Trump’s changing of the definition of harm as “corrupt, illegal, and completely untethered from scientific reality.”
“Trump is doing everything in his power to let his billionaire, big industry buddies ravage and obliterate our country to turn a quick buck,” Huffman said. “This move would let special interests destroy an endangered animal’s home, its food, its clean water – the basic things it needs to survive and recover – with zero repercussions or accountability. He’s pushing species to the brink of extinction and hurting the surrounding communities that depend on thriving ecosystems for their businesses, healthy air and water, and way of life.”
Now, a coalition of nine conservation organizations – the Center for Biological Diversity, Columbia Riverkeeper, the Conservation Law Foundation, Conservation Northwest, Friends of the Wild Swan, Oregon Wild, the Sierra Club, Swan View Coalition, and WildEarth Guardians – have filed suit, represented by Earthjustice.
The groups claim the administration’s action defies common sense and U.S. Supreme Court precedent, pointing to a 1995 case wherein the justices upheld the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s definition of harm. In their lawsuit, the groups point out that it is contradictory for the administration to defend the change based on Loper Bright, a Supreme Court case that gave the courts more authority in interpreting statutes, and then ignore the Supreme Court’s prior upholding of the harm definition.
“The rescission discards a longstanding and critical regulatory protection for imperiled wildlife based upon an irrational and unsupported interpretation of the ESA that would undermine the Act’s extraordinary record of success in preventing the extinction of and recovering threatened and endangered species. The rescission violates the plain language and overarching purpose of the ESA; it also lacks any reasoned basis and is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act,” the lawsuit states.
The conservation organizations have asked the courts to declare the administration’s action invalid and to restore the prior definition of harm.
