The USFWS and Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee estimate the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly population to be nearly 1,000 bears . This is far above federal recovery criteria , yet the grizzly remains listed under ESA due to taxpayer-funded lawsuits brought by anti-hunting groups .
agent fees ” to a party that wins a civil lawsuit against a federal agency by successfully demonstrating a threat of injury or irreparable harm .
“ EAJA was passed primarily in response to demands from the small business community , which was laboring under the increased environmental , consumer and health and safety regulations of the 1960s and 1970s ,” said Lowell E . Baier , an attorney in Washington , D . C ., and the author of the 2015 book Inside the Equal Access to Justice Act : Environmental Litigation and the Crippling Battle Over America ’ s Lands , Endangered Species and Critical Habitats . “ The concern was that when an agency such as OSHA [ Occupational Safety and Health Administration ] or the EPA improperly fined a small business , the small business might win in court but be bankrupted by having to pay its lawyers .”
According to Baier , the intent behind the law has not changed much over the 41 years since its passage , but the nature of its use certainly has . The EAJA included a cap on the net worth of any person or company that may benefit from it to make sure it serves real needs . However , in the final stages of establishing the EAJA , a last-minute amendment opened the door for nonprofit organizations to use it regardless of their net worth . This distinction grew murkier after 1995 , when Congress eliminated a provision requiring annual reports of expenditures under EAJA . This opened the door for environmental groups to receive EAJA awards without the public ever realizing it .
“ That set up a situation where environmental groups worth hundreds of millions of dollars could have their legal fees covered in cases where they used procedural laws like the National Environmental Policy Act to delay government projects they opposed for philosophical or political reasons . And in most cases , the money would be paid to the environmental group in a lump sum as part of a settlement agreement , with little if any oversight by the court , and then just disappear ,” said Baier . “ In theory , the law has a cap on fees , but that can be waived for lawyers with special expertise , such as in environmental law , when they ’ re paid market rates . We ’ ve documented numerous cases where payments were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars , and even over a million dollars in some cases .”
Beginning in 2012 , a bipartisan congressional effort required the Department of Interior to disclose EAJA payments , and the John D . Dingell Jr . Conservation , Management and Recreation Act of 2019 permanently restored EAJA reporting throughout the entire federal government . Baier says this greatly reduced litigation from many organizations because they did not believe the negative publicity was worth the money . Still , such litigation does persist — with some groups continuing to thrive on it .
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