Attorney General Brenna Bird Urges Judges Training School to Cut Ties with China-backed Environmental Group
DES MOINES—Attorney General Brenna Bird led a coalition of 23 attorneys general in a letter to the National Judicial College (“NJC”) asking it to end its relationship with a radical environmental organization with ties to the communist Chinese government.
The NJC is a premier judicial education institution. Judges across the United States rely on its courses, faculty, and institutional credibility. But its current relationship with the Environmental Law Institute (“ELI”) and ELI’s Climate Judiciary Project (“CJP”) raises serious questions about whether NJC has honored its goal to promote the independence and impartiality of the judiciary.
A recent report alleges that ELI has ties to the government of China, the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese military research, intelligence activities, and state-directed influence operations. ELI describes much of its work with China on its website.
And yet, NJC accepted a two-year, $215,000 grant in 2021 to support a year-long judicial-training program—called the Judicial Leaders in Climate Science (“JLCS”)—for the purpose of preparing judges to become “judicial leaders” on radical climate-related issues. The expectation is those trained judges could then serve as resources for other judges. ELI donated least $100,000 to NJC in 2023, and as recently as January 2025, NJC advertised a climate-and-drought webinar bearing ELI’s logo and presented jointly with ELI.
"Judges should rule based on an impartial interpretation of the law,” said Attorney General Bird. “But if they are trained by an organization that has been influenced by another government, and a hostile one at that, that impartiality is at risk. That’s not right for Iowans who believe they are getting a fair shake when they appear in front of a judge. The NJC needs to end their relationship with an organization with ties to China.”
States regularly appear before courts litigating questions involving environmental regulation, energy policy, and more. They should not have to wonder whether foreign interference from China and experimental green theories were injected into their cases through the NJC and ELI.
The states have requested that NJC suspended distributing and endorsing ELI and CJP materials and all related cooperative programming; preserved relevant records; directed ELI to cease representing that its programs or materials carry NJC’s approval pending any internal review; and start a process to ensure that the programming was not unduly or improperly influenced.
Attorney General Bird was joined by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Read the letter here.
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For More Information:
Jen Green | jen.green@ag.iowa.gov
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