The U.S. Department of Justice has asked federal judges to quickly rule against four lawsuits challenging the federal government’s decision to rescind the definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), removing consideration of the habitat threatened animals need to survive in establishing protections.
“Regulatory overreach burdens American families and businesses, and these now-rescinded Endangered Species Act regulations are a prime example,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the Justice Department’s Energy and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) said in a release. “The Department of Justice will continue vigorously defending President Trump’s efforts to uphold the Act as written and protect economic growth.”
Multiple lawsuits were filed after the U.S. Department of the Interior announced in July it was rescinding a decades-old definition of “harm” that required the government to consider modifications and degradation of habitat in setting protections and limiting human activity under the ESA. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump said the longstanding definition was used to abuse the ESA, obstructing lawful land use and impeding economic activity. The change could have massive ramifications for the commercial fishing sector, where habitat considerations often shape where fishers can operate and what kind of gear they use.
“President Trump is rescinding overly broad and burdensome regulations that have restrained our fishermen for too long,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said in a release. “We’re returning the ESA to its foundational purpose to ensure legitimate conservation goals are met without sacrificing economic growth and American prosperity.”
The decision prompted outrage from conservation groups around the country, many of whom filed lawsuits challenging the government’s action.
“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.”
Attorneys general from 21 states have also challenged the Department of the Interior’s action in court.
In general, the lawsuits claim the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for failing to justify its decision-making or consider the environmental impacts of the change.
“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,” a lawsuit filed by Earthjustice on behalf of several conservation groups argued.
Now, the government has filed motions in four separate lawsuits in the Northern District of California and the District of South Carolina asking the federal courts to expeditiously issue a summary judgement ruling in the government’s favor.
The government’s arguments rely heavily on a 2024 Supreme Court Case, Loper Bright v. Raimondo. That case, which involved commercial fishers suing the government over federal regulations requiring them to pay for at-sea observers out of pocket, led the Supreme Court to overturn the Chevron deference, a longstanding court doctrine that saw judges defer to regulatory agencies in interpreting statutes.
In announcing the rescission of the “harm” definition, the Department of Interior claimed that the Loper Bright case “requires agencies to follow the single best meaning of a statute rather than contorting laws to fit political agendas.” As such, the Trump administration claimed that the decades-old definition of “harm” was actually “an unlawful regulatory intrusion that interfered with private property rights.”
The Justice Department builds on those claims, looking back to the 1995 Supreme Court ruling in Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon, where the justices initially upheld the Department of the Interior’s decision to include the destruction or degradation of habitat under the definition of “harm” in the ESA. Loper Bright, the Justice Department claims, undermines that ruling and the expansive definition of “harm,” and with Chevron effectively dead, the government should revert to the simpler interpretation put forward by then-Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissent to the Sweet Home case – that “take” does not refer to habitat modifications.
“Chevron is gone,” the Justice Department argued in its filing. “Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo now requires agencies and courts to administer statutes according to their single, best meaning. And that best reading is not the Services’ prior regulation the majority deferred to in Sweet Home; it is the interpretation set forth by Justice Scalia in the dissent.”
In the initial lawsuit filed by Earthjustice, conservationists argued that it made no sense for the government to base its definition on a dissenting opinion that was overwhelmingly rejected by the court in Sweet Home.
“Federal defendants failed to rationally justify the rescission. The services adopted the ESA statutory interpretation advanced by a dissenting opinion in Sweet Home, notwithstanding that the Sweet Home majority rejected that very interpretation as inconsistent with the statutory text, structure, and legislative history,” the lawsuit stated. “The services in the Rescission had no basis for choosing – among all possible statutory interpretations – the one interpretation that the Supreme Court had already rebuffed.”
The Justice Department also claimed that the recission was “a matter of law, not policy,” meaning the Department of the Interior had no further obligations under the APA and NEPA. In the Justice Department’s telling, the Department of the Interior had no choice but to rescind the definition because once they initiated rulemaking on the text, they had no choice but to implement the “the single, best reading of the statute.”
The lawsuits disputed that interpretation early on, claiming that the recission was based on “individual policy preferences” and ignored many of the guidelines set out by the Supreme Court in the Loper Bright decision, which notably said that past court decisions that relied on the Chevron doctrine – such as Sweet Home – would remain in place, despite the overturning of Chevron.
