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SUNDAY SCIENCE: A SECRET PANEL TO QUESTION CLIMATE SCIENCE WAS
UNLAWFUL, JUDGE RULES  
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Lisa Friedman
January 30, 2026
The New York Times
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_ The researchers produced a report that was central in a Trump
administration effort to stop regulating climate pollution. _

The judge ruled that Energy Secretary Chris Wright violated the law
when he handpicked researchers to work in secret to produce a
government report on global warming., Nathan Howard/Reuters

 

A federal judge on Friday ruled the Energy Department violated the law
when Secretary Chris Wright handpicked five researchers who reject the
scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a sweeping
government report on global warming.

The Energy Department issued the report, which downplayed the dangers
of warming
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in late July without having held any public meetings or made records
available to the public. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency, then cited the report to justify a
plan to repeal the endangerment finding
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a landmark scientific determination that serves as the legal
foundation for regulating climate pollution.

But the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 does not allow agencies
to recruit or rely on secret groups for the purposes of policymaking.
Judge William Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of
Massachusetts said the Energy Department did not deny that it had
failed to hold open meetings or assemble a balance of viewpoints, as
the law requires, when it created the panel, known as the Climate
Working Group.

“These violations are now established as a matter of law,” wrote
Judge Young, who was nominated to the bench by Ronald Reagan. He said
the Climate Working Group was, in fact, a federal advisory committee
designed to inform policy, and not, as the Energy Department claimed,
merely “assembled to exchange facts or information.”

Erin Murphy, a senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund,
which brought the lawsuit together with the Union of Concerned
Scientists, said the ruling should undercut the Trump
administration’s efforts to eliminate climate regulations.

Ms. Murphy said that emails and other internal documents made public
under the judge’s orders showed that Energy Department political
appointees had coordinated with the E.P.A. and relayed instructions to
the climate researchers to produce what she called a “slanted”
scientific report.

“It was powerful for the court to issue this order making it clear
that this is a legal violation and not how the government should be
approaching policy,” she said.

The agency disbanded the Climate Working Group shortly after
environmental groups sued, and argued that, having done so, any legal
concerns were rendered moot. The court disagreed.

Ben Dietderich, a spokesman for Mr. Wright, noted in a statement that,
despite the ruling, Judge Young did not accede to a request by the
environmental groups to erase the report from the public record.

“The activists behind this case have long misrepresented not just
the actual state of climate science, but also the so-called scientific
consensus,” Mr. Dietderich said. “They have likewise sought to
silence scientists who have merely pointed out — as the Climate
Working Group did in its report — that climate science is far from
settled.”

Hundreds of scientists, including researchers from the American
Meteorological Society, a leading climate science organization,
denounced the group’s findings
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as riddled with errors and misrepresentations.

The members of the Climate Working Group were Steven E. Koonin, a
physicist and author; John Christy, an atmospheric scientist; Judith
Curry, a climatologist; Roy Spencer, a meteorologist; and Ross
McKitrick, an economics professor. All of them have questioned the
scientific consensus that climate change poses severe risks to the
planet and to human health.

Thousands of pages of emails and internal documents made public under
the judge’s orders showed that the group had worked diligently to
keep its existence shielded and met in secret more than a dozen times.

In April, shortly after the group was convened, Travis Fisher, the
director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato
Institute, who coordinated the Energy Department report, emailed the
researchers from a personal email account.

He said the “exact charge” of the panel was to provide an update
on science as it applies to the endangerment finding. He also informed
them that the Environmental Protection Agency had asked that the
document be “D.O.E.-branded.”

Mr. Fisher on Friday declined to comment.

The lawsuit named both the Energy Department and the E.P.A. Judge
Young on Friday wrote that he had found “no persuasive evidence”
that the E.P.A. violated the advisory committee law.

_LISA FRIEDMAN_ [[link removed]]_ is a Times
reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate
change and the effects of those policies on communities._

_Subscribe to the NEW YORK TIMES._
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