Trump 2.0 Environmental Case Scorecard

Tracking federal lawsuits on climate and environmental actions and policies in which the Trump administration is a party.

From the day he began his second term in January 2025, President Donald Trump and his administration have embarked on an unprecedented effort to upend U.S. environmental protection law and end policy to address the climate crisis. But advocates and states that favor action mounted an immediate counter-offensive in the courts.

Inside Climate News is watching the progress of federal court cases on Trump climate and environmental policy—both challenges to and cases launched by the administration.

Courts largely reined in the environmental rollbacks of the first Trump administration, but such outcomes are less certain in his second term. Trump appointees hold 28 percent of federal judgeships, including three of the nine seats on the Supreme Court. Trump’s appointees have embraced new legal doctrines that envision a limited role for federal regulators.

This chart tracks the current state of play, based on all of the substantive decisions in the cases so far. The outcomes tracked include rulings on preliminary legal issues, such as whether to put temporary holds on Trump administration actions while the cases are decided. The tracker does not include rulings on procedural issues, such as extensions of time or stays in proceedings. If a judge specified a motion was granted in part and denied in part, Inside Climate News counts that as a mixed ruling.

This table shows all of the cases being tracked by Inside Climate News. Those with the most recent decisions are at the top of the list. We will track these cases from initial trial or district courts, through any appeals, and to the Supreme Court if they are heard there.

The selection of cases draws heavily from the climate litigation database of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. The list also includes additional cases that don’t address climate policy directly, but raise relevant environmental justice and preservation issues. These include the lawsuit to block the Trump administration’s siting of a migrant detention camp in the Everglades. Readers can follow the link on the case name for more information at CourtListener, a nonprofit legal research website, which has one of the largest collections of freely available federal court documents online. CourtListener also provides links to PACER, the federal courts’ public access system, where documents are available for a fee.

This chart, categorizing cases into the broad issues being litigated, provides a window into the variety of means the Trump administration has used to upend climate policy. Federal grants cases are challenges to several agencies’ termination of programs such as the environmental justice funding opportunities that were made available in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Energy cases include challenges of actions taken to reshape the nation’s energy mix, such as Trump’s “energy emergency” executive order, stop-work orders on offshore wind projects and a presidential proclamation that exempted some coal-fired power plants from toxic pollution rules. Transparency lawsuits include challenges to the purging of agency web sites and the establishment of a secret climate science review committee.  

The list of cases and outcomes will be updated regularly. Inside Climate News welcomes feedback on the scorecard. Use this form to contact our team.

Cover photo:  President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on March 3. Credit: Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images