By Randy T. Simmons and Jordan Lofthouse
In 1980, Congress passed the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) to
protect the "little man" from government agencies that break their own
rules. Under EAJA, if the courts find that the government violated its
own policies, the government pays the litigation costs to the winners.
A
loophole in the law has enabled "Big Green" environmental groups to
broker a self-serving bargain with the government. Wealthy nonprofits
receive millions in EAJA reimbursements, no matter how much money those
organizations are worth, completely defeating the original intention of
the law.
This law promotes widespread injustice and is harming the very people it was intended to help.
After Congress passed the Sunset Act in 1995, reporting provisions for
EAJA payouts disappeared. Currently, EAJA lacks any sort of
recordkeeping, which means no government agency knows which
organizations are receiving payouts or how much they are receiving. With
no records, nonprofit groups are taking advantage of the fact that no
one would know how much money the groups are making by suing federal
agencies.
Politicians from both parties are trying to combat EAJA's
shortcomings. Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) is spearheading legislation
to address the lack of recordkeeping and place limits on reimbursements...
The multimillion-dollar Sierra Club Foundation is one of many
organizations using the EAJA loophole. In the 55 trials linked between
the Sierra Club and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), $2.4
million was given to cover lawyer fees and court costs. From 2000 to
2009, the Sierra Club requested fees in 194 cases and was awarded more
than $19 million. No one knows the exact amount because in two of the
cases, the reimbursement amount remains totally unreported.
EAJA
is also hurting average Americans. Tim Lequerica is a full-time rancher
living on his 320-acre ranch in Malheur County, Ore. His company holds a
permit to graze 444 cattle on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land and
uses water from the protected Owyhee River. In 1998, two environmental
groups found a BLM paperwork error and sued the BLM to review the
grazing practices on Lequerica's allotment. They also sued the BLM for
"fail[ing] to protect streams, fish, sage grouse, and other Owyhee
resources" by allowing ranchers to use the river to water their cattle.
The groups ultimately won their case, and Lequerica had to stop watering
his cattle at the Owyhee, where his family had grazed and watered their
cattle for nearly a century.
In the end, Lequerica paid over
$42,000 of his own money in legal fees fighting to protect his business.
Those environmental groups, however, had their legal fees, totaling
$128,000, voluntarily paid for by the government under EAJA.
Lequerica
said, "My tax money paid for every part of the litigation. I paid my
personal attorneys to represent me. My tax dollars paid the federal
government who failed to do all the paperwork correctly; and my tax
dollars paid [the environmental groups] to sue the federal government."
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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