Key Contacts
Environmental Litigation Trends 2025
Environmental litigators will continue to be busy in 2025 across state and federal courts and administrative tribunals. Existing caseloads and typical growth will continue—including cost recovery and contribution cases, toxic tort cases, enforcement cases, non-governmental organization (NGO) advocacy cases, and others—but notable increases are likely in a few key areas where environmental, regulatory, and judicial situations are changing.
Climate Change
Undeniable environmental changes are bringing on increases in the frequency or severity of flooding, wildfire, drought, hurricanes and tornadoes, and overall changes in the way our developed world interacts with the natural world. Those changes already have resulted in increased “climate change” litigation in both the macro and micro sense.
At the macro level, we see more lawsuits against state and federal governments alleging a failure to take more robust actions to combat climate change (see, e.g., Genesis B. v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 23-cv-10345 (C.D. Cal. 2023)) and more suits against private industry alleging underlying fault or exacerbation of the symptoms of climate change, sometimes filed by state and local governments themselves (see, e.g., Bucks County, Pennsylvania v. BP p.l.c. et al., No 24-1836 (Bucks Cnty. Ct. Com. Pl. Mar. 25, 2024)). These cases continue to wind their way through the courts, primarily in state courts that plaintiffs often perceive as a more favorable forum. To date, the Supreme Court has declined to review the issue of whether federal preemption warrants removal of these types of climate change cases, which are inherently national or international in scope, to federal courts. See, e.g., Shell PLC v. City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii, No. 23-952 (U.S. 2023) (certiorari denied). If the Supreme Court were to hold that these cases belong exclusively in federal courts, it may slow the pace at which they are filed going forward.
At the micro level, the impacts of climate change are straining public utilities and private citizens alike, leading to increases in litigation aimed at finding fault in the increased costs incurred or demanded for addressing those impacts or the damages they have caused. These types of cases include tort claims alleging damages from stormwater, increased flooding, drought or other natural disasters. Both the types of plaintiffs and the types of defendants in these cases are varied, and the role of climate change is often as a third party “empty chair” that each side seeks to characterize to its advantage. As climate and weather continue to become more extreme, increases in related litigation will follow. This month’s tragedy in Los Angeles is just one example of the increasing trend.
PFAS
Proposed and final federal regulations passed during the Biden Administration under the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) naming multiple per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as “hazardous substances” or “hazardous constituents,” respectively, are triggering direct legal enforcement activity under those statutes but also further fanning increased litigation activity in other areas. The ubiquity of PFAS in the environment coupled with state and federal concentration standards for these constituents that are so dramatically more stringent than for other contaminants means that “significant” detections of PFAS are being discovered at a higher rate and an increased level of litigation necessarily will follow.
PFAS-focused litigation matters in 2025 will include ongoing and potentially new challenges to these stringent state and federal regulations, claims against manufacturers, suppliers, or distributors of products that (knowingly or unknowingly) contain PFAS, personal injury or medical monitoring tort claims, claims from public utilities and others considering adding additional treatment to water supplies, contribution and cost recovery matters related required PFAS remediation work, and trespass, nuisance and other property damage-related claims. Even if the new federal standards are revoked or repealed by the new Trump administration, the litigation is unlikely to abate.
Judicial Challenges to Administrative Actions
Finally, though experts seem divided on the significance of the substantive impact of the United States Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, No. 22-451 (U.S. June 28, 2024), there is little doubt that the decision will prompt a higher volume of judicial challenges to federal administrative actions. Loper Bright overturned the traditional Chevron deference doctrine and held that courts no longer must defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of otherwise silent or ambiguous federal laws. Challenges to environmental agency actions, including those from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, are likely to be among the most frequent under this new doctrine. When paired with Corner Post v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, No. 22-1008 (U.S. July 1, 2024), which increased the flexibility of the six-year statute of limitations for administrative challenges under the Administrative Procedures Act based on the timing of the impact on a particular party, Loper Bright is likely to have an even broader impact on the volume of environmental litigation in federal courts.
These decisions open a procedural route to a significantly increased volume of judicial challenges to federal environmental administrative actions. While the volume will almost surely increase, the results are much more in doubt and will depend upon individual cases, advocates and judges. It is important to note that within the increased volume, we are likely to see both an increase in private sector challenges to federal actions and non-governmental organization challenges to federal actions, particularly with the incoming Trump Administration set to consider significant changes to national environmental policy.
