EELP attorney Hannah Perls speaks with Professor Andrew Mergen, faculty director of Harvard’s Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, about the latest updates to the National Environmental Policy Act, including new agency implementing procedures, the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Eagle County, and amendments included in the One Big Beautiful Bill recently passed by Congress. They talk about what these changes mean in practice for project developers, impacted communities, and the environment.

Transcript: https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/CleanLaw_EP104-Transcript.pdf

Links:

NEPA overview https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/nepa-overview/

NEPA Regulatory Tracker page https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/tracker/nepa-environmental-review-requirements/

NEPA after Eagle County decision https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/the-future-of-nepa-and-federal-permitting-after-eagle-county/

CEQ's template and agencies' procedures https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/decoding-agencies-new-nepa-procedures/

"Energy emergency" declaration https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/the-trump-administrations-aggressive-anti-regulatory-pro-fossil-fuel-directives/

EELP Senior Staff Attorney Hannah Perls speaks with the Attorney General of Massachusetts, Andrea Joy Campbell, and Vernice Miller-Travis, Executive Vice President and Environmental Justice Lead at the Metropolitan Group. They discuss the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle federal environmental justice and equity programs, funding, and priorities, and what those changes mean for critical infrastructure, toxics-free housing, access to clean air and clean water, and more. They also discuss what states and community-based organizations are doing in this moment to safeguard public health and environmental protections in Massachusetts and nationwide.

Transcript: https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CleanLaw_EP103-Transcript.pdf

Links:

Multi-State Guidance Concerning Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Employment Initiatives, from 16 state attorneys general, Feb. 13, 2025 https://www.mass.gov/doc/multi-state-guidance-concerning-diversity-equity-inclusion-and-accessibility-employment-initiatives/download

Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, a report from the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice, 1987 https://www.ucc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ToxicWastesRace.pdf

Searchable map of facilities invited by EPA to apply for presidential exemptions from air pollution limits, compiled by EDF, April 30, 2025 https://www.edf.org/maps/epa-pollution-pass/

In this episode, EELP founding director and Harvard Law Professor Jody Freeman speaks with Carrie Jenks, EELP's executive director and Ari Peskoe, director of EELP's Electricity Law Initiative. They discuss President Trump's most recent executive orders on climate, energy, and the environment and what they are watching for as agencies begin to implement the administration’s directives to roll back environmental regulations; challenge state energy and climate policies, and revitalize the coal industry.

Transcript available here: https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/CleanLaw_EP102-Transcript.pdf

Electricity Law Initiative Director Ari Peskoe and EELP Fellow Eliza Martin discuss their new paper, Extracting Profits from the Public: How Utility Ratepayers are Paying for Big Tech Power. As Amazon, Google, Meta, and other technology companies try to secure electricity for their new data centers, electric utilities are expanding their systems to serve them. Because utility companies profit by building infrastructure, serving data centers is a lucrative opportunity that is incentivizing utilities to offer attractive rates to Big Tech companies. Ari and Eliza discuss how rate-setting processes can shift utility costs among ratepayers and explain how rate structures, as well as contracts between utilities and data centers, could be transferring Big Tech’s energy costs to the public.

Transcript https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/CleanLaw_EP101-Transcript.pdf

Read the paper https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/extracting-profits-from-the-public-how-utility-ratepayers-are-paying-for-big-techs-power/

EELP founding director and Harvard Law Professor Jody Freeman speaks with Harvard Law Professor Richard Lazarus, Andy Mergen, director of the Harvard Law Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, and Carrie Jenks, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program. They discuss the Trump administration’s actions to date on climate, energy, environment, and natural resources and break down which actions have an immediate effect, what will take time, and what they will be watching for, including actions affecting the federal workforce. They also discuss why the practice and study of law matter now more than ever.

Transcript at https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/CleanLaw_EP100-Transcript.pdf

Our analysis of the Trump administration's initial executive orders https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/trumps-environmental-and-energy-executive-orders-initial-insights-and-what-were-watching/

Our rollback resources https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/topic/rollback-resources/

Our Regulatory Tracker https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/tracker-type/regulatory-tracker/

Our Federal Environmental Justice Tracker https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/tracker-type/environmental-justice-tracker/

EELP senior staff attorney Hannah Perls speaks with speaks with Debbie Chizewer and Nick Leonard about environmental justice lawyering, including leveraging Title VI of the Civil Rights Act on behalf of frontline communities. Debbie Chizewer is a managing attorney with Earthjustice based in Chicago, where she leads the organization's Midwest litigation strategy. Nick Leonard is the executive director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center based in Detroit, which provides legal representation to communities across Michigan.

This is the second episode in a 2-part series on Title VI.

Transcript at https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/CleanLaw_EP99.pdf

Links mentioned in episode:

Episode I in this series https://soundcloud.com/user-995691545/ep-9860-years-of-title-vi-of-the-civil-rights-act-part-1-la-v-epa

Great Lakes Environmental Law Center https://glelc.org/

Earthjustice Midwest Office https://earthjustice.org/office/midwest

CARE v. EPA, No. 4:15-03292-SBA (N.D. Cal.) https://earthjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/114.20order20032030202018.pdf

US Ecology Agreement between Michigan EGLE and Complainants https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/default/files/2024-08/title-vi-use-north-2024-08-29-title-vi-complaint-agreement-complaint-no-20-001-d-use-north-final_.pdf

EELP Senior Staff Attorney Hannah Perls speaks with Olatunde Johnson, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. Professor Johnson and Hannah discuss the history and evolution of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, a crucial legal tool for the environmental justice movement. Earlier this year, a federal judge blocked EPA and the Department of Justice from enforcing their Title VI rules prohibiting actions that disparately impact communities of color in the state of Louisiana, and now those rules are at risk of being struck down nationwide.  

This is the first episode in a 2-part series on Title VI.

Transcript at https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/CleanLaw_EP98.pdf

Links mentioned in show:

Louisiana v EPA - https://earthjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/2024.08.22-cain-judgement.pdf

Our podcast on the "Quagmire Quartet" Suite of Supreme Court Decisions Undermine Administrative Law -https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/cleanlaw-suite-of-supreme-court-decisions-undermine-administrative-law/

Petition for Rulemaking on Title VI from Republican-led Attorneys General - https://www.myfloridalegal.com/sites/default/files/2024-04/epa-title-vi-comment-final.pdf

Response to Petition for Rulemaking from Environmental Justice and Civil Rights Groups - https://www.nclc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2024.09.04_Letter_Title-VI-Response-cover-letter-executive-summary-response-letter.pdf

Democratic AGs’ Response to the Petition for Rulemaking - https://stateimpactcenter.org/files/AG_Actions_NY_Response_FL_Rulemaking_Petition_9.5.24.pdf

Olatunde C. Johnson, Lawyering That Has No Name: Title VI and the Meaning of Private Enforcement, 66 Stan. L. Rev. 1293 (2014). - https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1094/

EELP senior staff attorney Sara Dewey speaks with Andy Mergen, Faculty Director of the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School and former chief of the Appellate Section of the Environment & Natural Resources Division at the Department of Justice. Andy and Sara discuss the origin and evolution of presidential authority to designate national monuments under the Antiquities Act, how Congress and the courts have responded to these designations over the act’s 118-year history, present day legal challenges to the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, and what could be ahead for monuments in the Supreme Court.

Transcript here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/CleanLaw_EP97-final.pdf

In this episode, EELP Founding Director and Harvard Law Professor Jody Freeman speaks with Andy Mergen, faculty director of the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School and former chief of the Appellate Section of the Environment & Natural Resources Division at the Department of Justice. Jody and Andy break down what they call the “Quagmire Quartet” of recent Supreme Court decisions that overturn the Chevron doctrine and undermine administrative agencies. They discuss the new challenges that federal agencies will face as they work to protect the public, the ways in which the Supreme Court has centralized power in the judiciary, how courts can continue to uphold important federal rules, and why they have hope.

Transcript available at https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/CleanLaw_EP96-transcript.pdf

California has had a pivotal role in creating US clean car and clean air regulations under multiple administrations. In this episode, EELP Founding Director and Harvard Law Professor, Jody Freeman, speaks with Mary Nichols, former Chair of the California Air Resources Board and California's Secretary for Natural Resources, as well as former Assistant Administrator for EPA's Office of Air and Radiation. They discuss California's role in driving car and air emissions regulation, how automakers and market forces have evolved since the 1970s, and what may happen in the coming years under either election outcome.

Transcript: https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Jody-and-Mary-episode-95.pdf