STEVE MILLOY: Judge-Grooming By Green Activists Must End

Well, isn’t this convenient? The Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), an organization launched by the left-wing Environmental Law Institute to “train” America’s judges in the dark art of climate alarmism – has quietly swept its tracks.

Where judges’ names were once found blithely endorsing CJP’s curriculum, now we find anonymous “participating judges” and sterilized public pages. The shame is palpable. If there’s any good news, it’s that CJP is finally embarrassed about its not-so-secret effort to brainwash the bench with climate junk science. The bad news is that the indoctrination marches on, just a little better disguised.

CJP’s entire strategy has been to infiltrate the judiciary with one-sided climate hysteria, dressing up advocacy as “neutral, objective education.” They’ve marshaled millions in funding from anti-energy foundations to host seminars, boot camps, and a listserv where at least 2,000 judges have, at last count, been treated to modules straight from climate activists’ playbooks.

Then, there’s the hypocrisy. The Left petulantly demands more transparency for Supreme Court justices – who, thanks to lifetime tenure, are beyond direct influence – yet remains curiously quiet about CJP’s efforts among state judges, many of whom serve in time-limited or elected roles and, let’s be blunt, are far more vulnerable to activist grooming.

Archived chats pulled back the curtain on judges and CJP bureaucrats trading climate studies, congratulating each other for activist events, and sharing litigation updates with a wink and a nudge. Delaware Judge Travis Laster wasn’t just sending peer-reviewed science, he was distributing hush-hush YouTube presentations forecasting industry bankruptcy with the caveat, “don’t forward or use without checking with me.” This is not impartial education; this is prepping the bench for lawfare against the energy sector.

Indiana’s Judge Stephen Scheele, whose glowing review of the CJP once topped their testimonial page, now claims amnesia. No “substantive communication,” he says, though the records reveal otherwise. Embarrassment breeds revisionist history – the tell-tale sign of an operation caught red-handed. Even the CJP’s own curriculum is a master class in loaded messaging, pedaling wind and solar as the “cheapest” energy, evangelizing the pseudo-religion of “climate justice,” and treating attribution science (a field riddled with criticism) as settled fact. Dissent? Never heard of her.

Meanwhile, the group refuses to disclose which judges have been “trained.” That’s because they well know that an adversarial lawyer, if not the public, might want to know if their judge has been subtly instructed to see energy producers as climate villains. The Judicial Leaders in Climate Science program has now been scrubbed from view; the CJP forum is a graveyard of broken links. All this selective transparency serves to hide, not halt, the effort to tip the legal scales.

The greatest challenge now falls to the defense bar. How can it be ascertained whether or not a judge sitting on a blockbuster climate case has spent a year marinating in activist climate dogma behind closed doors? Judicial disclosure ought to be mandatory and recusals should be vigorously pursued. If plaintiffs and their deep-pocketed allies are bringing energy companies to the dock, the least the bench can do is profess its ideological immunization – on the record.

Let’s not pretend this is normal. When the Federalist Society hosts a legal conference, for example, leftists call for judicial bans and ethical investigations. But when the Environmental Law Institute trains judges – in partnership with the Federal Judicial Center, no less – on climate litigation sympathetic to the green agenda, it’s called “objectivity.” The Wall Street Journal nailed it: it’s a double standard, and it’s rotten.

Immediate steps need to be taken to end activist intrusion into America’s courtrooms. Congress should demand an end to any collaboration between the Federal Judicial Center and the Climate Judiciary Project, and clarify the vetting of all outside partnerships. Opponents of President Biden’s failed Supreme Court overhaul should redirect their attention toward the bona fide ethics crisis brewing in state and lower federal courts. State officials must bar the Environmental Law Institute and its affiliates from using taxpayer-funded facilities and law schools for ideological boot camps. If you care about judicial integrity, now’s the time to shout it from the rooftops; silence is compliance.

The CJP may be embarrassed, but it’s not stopping. If the courts are to survive this activist incursion, it will only be because the defendants, attorneys, and lawmakers recognize what’s happening and fight back with every ounce of transparency, scrutiny, and legal fortitude they can muster. Otherwise, we’ll all pay at the pump, in the courts, and in the loss of an independent judiciary.

Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer, publishes JunkScience.com and is on X @JunkScience.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.