SouthernWorldwide.com – A national security advocacy group, State Armor, has called for a congressional investigation into the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), a prominent environmental law nonprofit, due to its past collaborations and programming with organizations linked to the Chinese government.
The Environmental Law Institute, through its Climate Judiciary Project, has reportedly educated over 2,000 American judges on environmental law since 2018. State Armor’s report, submitted to lawmakers on Tuesday, alleges that ELI has fostered relationships with entities described as affiliated with the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or China’s military research sector over its decades of engagement with China.
A letter accompanying the report, addressed to congressional leadership, asserts that ELI’s work over three decades has consistently advanced Chinese strategic and national security interests. It further claims that this work has undermined American national security by restricting domestic energy producers and industrial expansion, while simultaneously pushing the U.S. towards dependence on energy sources controlled by the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
State Armor, an organization focused on state-level responses to foreign threats, is expressing concern that these ties could have significant domestic implications for the United States.
The organization is led by Michael Lucci, a lobbyist who maintains donor privacy to protect them from potential targeting by the Chinese government. Lucci stated in a profile that his group avoids funding from corporate and foreign sources to prevent conflicts of interest.
The congressional letter questions the impartiality of judicial education initiatives that are funded, organized, or influenced by entities with relationships with foreign adversaries. It emphasizes that the core issue is not the necessity of continuing judicial education, but rather the potential for such initiatives to compromise the perception or reality of judicial impartiality.
The Environmental Law Institute, founded in 1969 and based in Washington, D.C., states its mission is to develop innovative, just, and practical solutions for environmental law and policy across various borders and sectors. The Climate Judiciary Project, launched in 2018, is an educational initiative aimed at informing judges about climate science, climate change, and their legal ramifications.
Recent activities highlighted by State Armor include the publication of an English-language paper in ELI’s journal in May. This paper, authored by two Chinese academics from state-run universities, detailed China’s progress in environmental protection.
In June, ELI hosted a Chinese legal scholar for a panel discussion on global environmental law career paths. This scholar, who previously participated in an ELI fellowship in 2021, has been involved in Chinese ministry-level projects related to environmental legislation and policy, according to her biography on ELI’s website. Her experience also includes managing internationally funded programs for training Chinese judges and environmental law enforcement officers.
ELI openly acknowledges on its website its engagement in China since the mid-1990s, aimed at improving environmental rule of law, enforcement, and compliance. The organization cites the critical role of China and its large population in global environmental protection as the motivation for this work.
ELI’s website details its partnerships with Chinese NGOs, universities, law firms, businesses, judges, and environmental regulators. These collaborations have included capacity-building workshops, high-level roundtables, seminars, and panel discussions on Chinese policy issues. ELI has also trained lawyers on environmental justice and published articles and books on sustainability, environmental management, and constitutional environmental law in China.
State Armor contends that this knowledge exchange ultimately benefits the Chinese government at the expense of the United States. The group urges lawmakers to scrutinize the extent of ELI’s cooperation with Chinese entities and to review the funding, curriculum development, expert selection, and governance of its judicial education programs.
According to State Armor’s report, ELI’s China Program provides technical assistance, capacity building, and legal training to Chinese NGOs, judges, and environmental regulators under the guise of “improving environmental rule of law.”
To substantiate these claims, State Armor points to public records indicating that some of the organizations ELI has collaborated with are linked to the Chinese Communist Party or the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
State Armor references ELI’s own website, which states that the organization worked with the Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy (PRCEE), a think tank affiliated with China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, to enhance China’s environmental regulatory system.
State Armor argues that PRCEE’s affiliation with the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and its role in policy support place it within China’s governmental environmental policy framework.
In 2013, PRCEE was involved in a report jointly published by the Chinese government and the United Nations Environment Programme, titled “China’s Green Long March.” This title is seen as an allusion to the CCP’s historical “Long March.”
ELI’s website also indicates that its China International Business Dialogue on Environmental Governance (CIBDEG) working group has provided information and analysis to the Chinese government regarding environmental regulations in the United States and Europe, as well as the concerns of multinational businesses.
The CIBDEG working group is described as a platform to facilitate dialogue between multinational businesses and Chinese environmental regulatory authorities on best practices in environmental regulation and performance by governments and industries.
ELI, in collaboration with PRCEE, the Chinese law firm JunHe, and the American law firm Latham & Watkins, launched CIBDEG in 2018. A press release from JunHe indicated that China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment was also a founding participant of the working group.
Beyond its work with PRCEE and CIBDEG, ELI has also partnered with universities that have faced scrutiny from the U.S. government due to their ties to China’s military.
For example, ELI reported training 265 environmental NGO workers, judges, prosecutors, and attorneys from 26 provinces at Tianjin University in 2018. This university was later placed on the Commerce Department’s Entity List for alleged trade-secret theft linked to military applications. ELI has stated it was not involved in any alleged intellectual property theft.
ELI has been consistently scrutinized by Republican lawmakers and conservative activists regarding its China-related activities, foreign partnerships, and climate-focused judicial education programs. These criticisms have largely stemmed from media reports alleging close collaboration with the Chinese government and individuals linked to the CCP, rather than from investigations by U.S. government bodies.
Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has been particularly vocal in his criticism of ELI, alleging that the organization has connections to the Chinese government and that its operations are detrimental to the United States.
“We are witnessing a systematic campaign against American energy,” Cruz stated during a June 2025 hearing. He described it as a “coordinated assault by the radical left, backed and paid for by the Chinese Communist Party to seize control of our courts, to weaponize litigation against U.S. energy producers.”
He further elaborated, “The judiciary itself is being quietly captured and brainwashed as left-wing nonprofits host closed-door trainings that indoctrinate judges to adopt the ideological goals of the climate lawfare machine.”
The senator continued, “Perhaps the most insidious because it strikes at the very heart of the rule of law, judicial capture. It is being carried out by one organization with near total control over climate-related judicial training, the Environmental Law Institute, and its Climate Judiciary Project… They claim to be science-driven but what they are doing is ex parte indoctrination, pressuring judges to set aside the rule of law and rule instead according to a predetermined political narrative.”
In its letter to lawmakers, State Armor alleged that ELI promotes a policy agenda that disadvantages American energy interests.
“The jurisprudential frameworks ELI promotes to American judges disproportionately favor regulatory constraints on U.S. domestic energy production, with no commensurate frameworks within China’s system,” the State Armor report reads. “Consciously or not, this is an instance of ELI pushing for American unilateral disarmament in energy security and industrial production.”
