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Surveys consistently show that most Americans care about the environment and want it to be protected. So in the 1960s and 1970s, when Congress passed much of the country’s landmark environmental protection legislation, lawmakers set up a system to use that passion for the public’s benefit.
Congress realized that the executive branch might not always use its power to enforce environmental regulations, explains Sarah J. Morath, a professor of environmental law at Wake Forest University. That’s why, in key laws like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, lawmakers included provisions that let regular people file lawsuits against polluters and federal agencies that don’t enforce antipollution regulations.
One of the most recent of these lawsuits was filed by the NAACP, a national civil rights group, alleging that Elon Musk’s xAI is excessively polluting the air with natural gas turbines powering an artificial intelligence data center in Mississippi.
But the Trump administration has asked a judge to dismiss the case, with what Morath explains is a new argument against letting citizens exercise the rights that Congress explicitly gave them.
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