Why is no one questioning the outsized role of the Federalist Society in the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court? For those who care about the fate of the Earth, the backstory is very troubling. Donald Trump relied on the group to vet his Supreme Court pick, and Judge Gorsuch is listed as an “expert” on the group’s website. Let there be no doubt: this bodes ill for the future of environmental law.

The Federalist Society is a network of lawyers and law students who have set out to reshape the American legal system in a conservative mold. In “Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution,” political scientist Amanda Hollis-Brusky chronicles the ascendancy of the group as an incubator of extremely conservative ideologies, including regressive doctrines on gun control and campaign finance.

The Federalist Society’s anti-environmental agenda finds root in an anti-federal, anti-regulatory ideology promoted by the group’s founders. One of the group’s founding donors was the Olin Foundation, an offshoot of the Olin Corporation, a DDT manufacturer. Olin had numerous environmental problems, including a heap of trouble for contaminating the town of Saltville, Virginia with toxic mercury pollution. In her book “Dark Money,” noted author Jane Mayer describes the role of the Olin family in early efforts to promote a conservative agenda in law schools across the U.S., beginning with an $18 million donation to Harvard Law School to establish a “law and economics” program.

The group’s relentless attack on environmental regulations continues today in full force. At the Federalist Society 2015 annual meeting, the agenda focused on ways to freeze or undo federal regulations. You know, those pesky rules which limit how much toxic pollution a corporation can dump into the air and water, or which protect drinking water and wildlife from fracking. The Federalist Society would have us believe that environmental protection should be left to the states, with little to no interference from the EPA. They forget that the failure of states to protect their air and water was what led to federal environmental laws in the first place. Nor do they recognize that roughly half the states in the country have been downright hostile to environmental regulations, (as evidenced by their non-stop litigation against most new EPA new rules), and would become environmental “sacrifice zones” in the absence of federal environmental law.

As John O'Grady, the head of the EPA union, told E&E News after Scott Pruitt’s introductory speech: "Federalism is one that stuck out like a sore thumb. If we pushed environmental protection, environmental enforcement to the states, how are they going to get it done?"

But what is perhaps most telling are the environmental records of two Supreme Court Justices most identified with the Society –- Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito -– both of which reveal that these justices invariably rule against environmental protection. Time after time, Justices Thomas and Alito have voted against laws designed to clean up our air and water and protect public health. In two of the biggest environmental cases to reach the Court in recent years, the two Federalist Society Justices voted against the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas pollution and cross-state air pollution (luckily they were on the losing side both times). It’s as if they never saw an environmental law they liked.

Judge Gorsuch appears similarly inclined: his Federalist Society philosophy includes a dim view of public interest litigation. Gorsuch penned a 2005 National Review piece in which he concluded that “as Republicans win presidential and Senate elections and thus gain increasing control over the judicial appointment and confirmation process, the level of sympathy liberals pushing constitutional litigation can expect in the courts may wither over time, leaving the Left truly out in the cold.”

Let there be no doubt that a Supreme Court packed with Federalist Society judges will roll back environmental laws and undo decades of progress in cleaning up our air and water and conserving wildlife. Hope and pray that this does not happen, as it is the last thing we need in the face of a climate catastrophe.

TAKE ACTION: Tell your senators to oppose the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.