Reducing rampant pollution across the United States was so important that when Congress passed many environmental protection laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act, it didn’t want to leave enforcement only to the executive branch. Congress specifically wrote into those laws ways for citizens to enforce them through the courts when the government does not act to address the problem.

Called “citizen suit provisions,” those parts of the laws allow regular people and advocacy groups to sue companies they believe are violating the law, as well as federal agencies that fail to enforce the laws. Since the 1970s, these provisions have been used in over 2,000 lawsuits, with a majority of environmental cases being citizen suit cases. These include halting dam construction to protect endangered species and securing US$14.2 million in civil penalties for illegal emissions from a petrochemical facility.

Now, the Trump administration is suggesting that citizens should not be allowed to enforce these laws, despite what the laws say. The US Department of Justice has claimed in a case involving Elon Musk’s xAI that people should be required to leave enforcement to the executive branch – even if it decides to take no action.

A history of success: For over 50 years, citizen suits have been an effective part of cleaning up the environment in the US. The process is fairly straightforward: a person or group must send a formal notification to the person, company, or agency they suspect of violating the law – with a copy to the US Environmental Protection Agency. If after 60 days the problem is not rectified, the people can sue.

Citizen suits often ask the courts to order a stop to polluting activities, payments for reducing or cleaning up harm done, and civil penalties paid to the government. But if the government has already begun an enforcement action or is actively prosecuting the violator, a citizen suit cannot proceed.