Biden’s Top EPA Cop to Help Cities, States Fight Trump in Court

The top environmental enforcer during the Biden era is gearing up to help cities and states push back against the Trump administration in new roles at a boutique law firm and a top environmental law school.

David Uhlmann, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement division, said his new jobs offer a platform to advance Democratic ideas on topics like climate change and environmental justice.

“We’re at an enormously consequential moment,” Uhlmann said. “The stakes couldn’t be higher for environmental protection because we have a president who has made clear his disdain for climate action and environmental protection.”

In one of his new roles, Uhlmann on Thursday will become a partner at Marten Law, a Seattle-based boutique firm specializing in environmental litigation.

His portfolio will center on representing cities, towns, and other local governments in their efforts to address climate change and exposure to emerging contaminants such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

Uhlmann said he, like the local jurisdictions that have filed lawsuits against President Donald Trump’s EPA, sees city- and state-level litigation as an important bulwark against the agency’s sweeping deregulatory push.

“This administration and this EPA are abandoning the field of environmental protection, and that means that state and local governments, and the private sector, need to double down and triple down on their efforts to protect the environment and to promote a sustainable future,” Uhlmann said. “So there’s just extraordinary pressure on state and local governments to fill the void created by EPA’s abandonment of climate action and environmental protection.”

In representing local governments, Uhlmann said he expects to come face to face with what he called a central hypocrisy of the Trump EPA.

“They want to say, on one hand, that they believe in states’ rights, and promoting the values of federalism that are enshrined in our Constitution, while on the other hand, attacking not just California, but Michigan and Hawaii and a whole host of states that are trying to step up where the Trump administration is failing,” he said.

The EPA in Trump’s first term revoked a waiver that let California set its own vehicle emissions rules, and in this term supports a congressional effort to scrub the waivers.

Trump’s Department of Justice also sued New York, Vermont, Michigan and Hawaii to block efforts in those states to collect billions of dollars from oil companies for damage caused by climate change.

Uhlmann said he also wants to work on behalf of energy companies, utilities, and trade associations involved in clean energy. That’s consistent with his belief that the private sector must be enlisted as a partner in cutting carbon emissions.

“State and local governments should be promoting sustainability, but ultimately, sustainability efforts need to come from the private sector,” he said.

Uhlmann spent 17 years as a prosecutor at the Justice Department, including seven as chief of the environmental crimes section.

New Role in Academia

Uhlmann will also become a visiting professor at the George Washington University Law School, where he will teach environmental crimes and criminal law starting July 1.

Some of his teaching work could involve emphasizing the value of a career in public service, given the Trump administration’s ongoing critiques and dismissals of federal workers.

“We’re going to need to rebuild a federal government, as soon as this administration ends,” Uhlmann said. “And it’s going to be even more important than ever that good people seek out public service and devote their careers to it.”

Even before Trump took office, a 2024 survey by the Partnership for Public Service found that only 7% of Americans aged 18 to 34 had ever applied for a federal job.

Uhlmann previously served as an environmental law professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

Broadly, he said he wants his portfolio of new work to be non-partisan so he can reach a broader audience.

“We’ve experienced greater partisan rancor than at any time in our lifetimes,” Uhlmann said. “And I think bridging the divides that are cleaving America requires reaching people, talking with people, and listening to people who come from different backgrounds and who may not agree with us.”