The National Environmental Law Center (NELC) is a non-profit litigation center founded in 1990 to enforce anti-pollution laws and promote long-term solutions to the nation’s pressing environmental problems. NELC attorneys have a proven track record of bringing corporate polluters to justice. NELC works closely with national, state, and local citizen groups, providing essential legal expertise and representation to protect public health and the environment. NELC helps the public to shape and uphold our core environmental laws, serving as a major force in public interest litigation.
NELC has been a leader in efforts to crack down on violators of federal environmental laws for decades, bringing over 90 public interest enforcement actions and winning more than $350 million in court-ordered penalties and pollution reduction measures.
In addition to litigation and regulatory challenges, NELC countermands threats to legal protections of environmental and public health by filing amicus (friend of the court) briefs in litigation pending before the Supreme Court and other federal courts. These efforts focus on cases in which the integrity of environmental laws, or the rights of the public to participate in the implementation of those laws, is threatened.