Background

Citizen Suits in States

Currently, sixteen states have environmental citizen suit statutes on the books. In general, these statutes give citizens, or “any person,” the right to sue the state, a private party, or both, to protect the state’s environment. Some citizen suit statutes provide only for injunctive relief to stop harmful activity or to force the state to act, while others authorize the award of money damages as well. Whether the citizen filing the lawsuit can recover her or his attorney’s fees and litigation costs is another variation among the statutes. Finally, there exist different meanings for the term “environment.”

Almost all of the states with citizen suit statutes allow suits against “any party,” though some are limited to actions against only the state. Half of the statutes do not require a violation of law for a suit to be filed. Half allow equitable relief only, while two others also provide for penalties and money damages, and the rest are silent on this issue. Only a very few provide for costs to the prevailing party. Finally, only two states actually define the words “environment” or “natural resources.”

Federal Citizen Suit Provisions

The citizen suit has become a staple of federal environmental law, as nearly every major environmental statute provides for citizen suits. In general, these provisions allow “any citizen” to sue “any person” to enforce the specific requirements or limitations of the environmental protection statute.

The main difference between citizen suit provisions at the state and federal level is that all federal provisions limit the actions to violations of existing law. In addition, federal provisions are found in individual environmental statutes, while some state provisions are in distinct citizen suit laws and cover a variety of environmental violations. And, because the federal statutes differ somewhat in intent and purpose, the scope of their enforcement varies.

The Model Citizen Suit Provision

This model bill included in this package was developed by experts at Defenders of Wildlife. The legislation will give citizens the right to bring a suit against violators of state environmental laws if they are adversely affected by the environmental conditions resulting from the violations. A citizen suit could potentially be brought under any law which directly or indirectly deals with the environment, or could even be brought for any damage to the environment, regardless of whether a law was violated.