Federal Judiciary Removes Climate Change Chapter From Judges’ Manual After GOP Pressure
The Federal Judicial Center, the agency that provides research and education for the federal courts, has withdrawn a chapter on climate science from its recently updated “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence,” following objections from Republican state attorneys general. The move leaves federal judges without an official resource on climate change as numerous related cases proceed through the court system, including two currently before the Supreme Court.
The decision, reported on February 9th and 10th by Reuters and The New York Times, came after a group of attorneys general sent a letter criticizing the chapter’s content, alleging bias and arguing it could influence ongoing litigation.
The fourth edition of the 1,682-page manual, the first update in 15 years, was released on December 31, 2025. It included over 90 pages dedicated to climate change terminology, the scientific consensus on climate change, and methods for attributing weather events to climate warming. The chapter generally aligned with the conclusions of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and acknowledged uncertainties within the field.
The manual is a widely-used resource for law clerks and justices grappling with complex scientific issues, produced in partnership with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Its removal of the climate change section has raised concerns about the judiciary’s ability to navigate increasingly frequent climate-related legal challenges.
The objections from Republican attorneys general centered on the chapter’s acceptance of human influence on climate change as a settled fact. A letter sent to the Federal Judicial Center on January 29th argued the manual was “tainted by biased authors, reviewers, and sources involved in ongoing litigation” and represented “an inappropriate attempt to rig case outcomes in favor of one side.”
The attorneys general also raised concerns about the affiliations of the chapter’s authors, 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. They noted Wentz’s connection to Sher Edling, a law firm representing plaintiffs in several climate lawsuits.
Wentz defended the chapter’s objectivity, stating she has never served as a witness or counsel in climate litigation and that the objections misrepresent the nature of climate lawsuits, which typically focus on responsibility for damages rather than the science of warming itself. She described the removal as “a bad-faith critique that is ultimately aimed at repressing scientific information” and warned it would be “used to advance this narrative that there is a debate about even the most fundamental aspects of climate change.”
On February 6th, Judge Robin L. Rosenberg, director of the Federal Judicial Center, informed West Virginia Attorney General John McCuskey that the center “has omitted the climate science chapter.” McCuskey hailed the decision as a “win for domestic energy production, American prosperity and security, and West Virginia.”
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has preserved a copy of the original manual, including the climate change chapter, on its website. The Federal Judicial Center declined to comment on the matter.
The removal of the chapter comes as a growing number of lawsuits seek to hold oil and gas companies accountable for the impacts of climate change, a legal strategy repeatedly criticized by Republican attorneys general who accuse liberal groups of attempting to use the courts to enact environmental regulations.
