Judiciary Cuts Climate Section of Science Manual After Backlash

The federal judiciary’s research office removed a section on climate science from its updated manual on scientific evidence, following pushback from more than two dozen Republican-appointed attorneys general.

Judge Robin L. Rosenberg, director of the Federal Judicial Center, told West Virginia Attorney General John McCuskey (R) in a one-sentence Feb. 6 letter that the center “has omitted” the climate science chapter from the recently released Fourth Edition of its Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence.

The reversal came roughly a week after McCuskey and other attorneys general called on the FJC in a Jan. 29 letter to “immediately withdraw” the section, which they described as “inappropriate” and argued it would favor environmental advocates in climate-related litigation.

“The Fourth Edition places the judiciary firmly on one side of some of the most hotly disputed questions in current litigation: climate-related science and ‘attribution.’ Such work undermines the judiciary’s impartiality and places a thumb on one side of the scale,” they wrote.

The FjC declined to comment Monday. McCuskey said in a Feb. 6 statement that the section’s removal is a “win for domestic energy production, American prosperity and security, and West Virginia.”

The manual, which was last updated over a decade ago, aims to help federal judges handle cases that involve complex scientific evidence. The initially released version included more than 80 pages on climate science, including sections on how judges should evaluate climate evidence in court, describing data practices in climate research, and typical expert qualifications.

It was authored by Jessica Wentz, a senior fellow at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and Radley Horton, a professor at Columbia University’s Climate School.

However, the attorneys general argued that the professors didn’t appear to have consulted those who disagree with mainstream climate science, including those involved in a controversial report released by the Department of Energy last year that downplayed effects of climate change.

They also took issue with the section’s discussion of attribution science, which is related to human influence over climate change—an issue that arises in litigation challenging a company or government’s environmental impacts or obligations.

The manual quoted a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that found it “is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.”

These conclusions “would in turn support the most substantial findings of liability for climate-driven plaintiffs,” the attorneys general said.

The revised version, which also includes sections on forensic evidence, medicine, engineering, and artificial intelligence, notes that it omitted the reference guide on climate science on Feb. 6.

However, the climate section is still referenced in a forward to the manual written by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.

“In the coming years, judges will confront lawsuits relating, for example, to artificial intelligence, climate science, and epidemiology,” Kagan wrote.