What Mike Garrity Won’t Count: Congress Takes Aim at EAJA Abuse

Taking aim at the use of the Equal Access to Justice Act as a serial litigation tool.

We Want to Hear From You!

Have you seen forest management projects delayed or stopped by litigation? What did that delay cost the forest, watershed, wildlife, business, or community?

Do you support the FEES Act? Should taxpayers continue paying the legal bills of well-funded organizations that repeatedly sue federal agencies?

Please leave a comment below. Share your experience, tell us what we have missed, and let other Evergreen readers know what is happening in your National Forests and rural communities.

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Well, well, well...
Look at this.

Two members of Congress - Harriet Hageman of Wyoming and Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin - have introduced legislation aimed squarely at the misuse of the Equal Access to Justice Act by well-funded environmental organizations and serial litigants.

They call it the Fixing Egregiously Expensive Suits Act - the FEES Act.

You have to admire the acronym.

H.R. 9536 was introduced on June 30 and referred to the House Judiciary Committee. As of August 19, not one member of Congress from Washington, Oregon, or California has signed on as a co-sponsor.

Not one.

Those three states have 68 members in the House of Representatives and contain 49 National Forests - many of them frequent targets of litigation intended to delay or stop forest management projects.

Washington has two Republicans in the House - Dan Newhouse and Michael Baumgartner. The other eight are Democrats.

Oregon Congressman Cliff Bentz is the state’s only Republican. The other five are Democrats.

California has nine Republicans in its 52-member House delegation, including Doug LaMalfa and Tom McClintock, both longtime advocates for rural communities and active forest management.

Yet, as of this writing, Hageman and Tiffany are standing alone.

What the FEES Act Would Do

To my knowledge, H.R. 9536 represents the most direct congressional challenge to the misuse of the Equal Access to Justice Act since it was enacted in 1980.

EAJA’s original purpose was straightforward and honorable: to give individuals, small businesses, veterans, Social Security recipients, and others of limited means a fair opportunity to challenge federal regulatory overreach.

But the law also became a powerful financial tool for well-funded environmental organizations that repeatedly sue federal agencies and then seek reimbursement of their legal fees from taxpayers.

And make no mistake - serial environmental litigation has become an industry.

The roots of this litigation industry reach back decades.

In 1980, the U.S. Forest Service designated the northern spotted owl as an indicator species for old-growth forests. That decision required the agency to evaluate the effects of timber sales on owl populations and helped establish the owl as a proxy for the condition of the larger old-growth ecosystem.

The designation set the stage for the environmental and legal battles that followed. Spotted Owl Management Areas began removing large areas of federal forestland from timber production, and the owl increasingly became a legal lever for challenging federal timber sales and forest management.

Ten years later, in 1990, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the northern spotted owl as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The Timber Wars were already underway, but the listing intensified them and opened the door to decades of litigation over the management of federal forests.

The FEES Act attempts to return EAJA to the people it was intended to protect.

Among its provisions, the bill would:

• Require a party receiving fees to have a direct and personal monetary interest in the outcome, including personal injury, private property damage, or an unpaid federal disbursement.
• Limit an award to $200,000 in a single proceeding or civil action.
• Prevent a party from receiving awards for more than three proceedings or civil actions initiated in the same calendar year, with exceptions for certain class actions and cases involving the Social Security Administration or Department of Veterans Affairs.
• Prohibit settlement agreements or consent decrees that result in federal regulations or guidance from including taxpayer payment of attorneys’ fees or litigation costs.
• Require an independent scientific review of the law’s effects on federal forest and rangeland health, catastrophic wildfire and insect risks, biological diversity, watershed quality, and the economic productivity of federal lands.

In other words, the bill does not eliminate access to justice. It restricts access to a taxpayer-financed litigation machine.

Help Move the FEES Act Forward!

H.R. 9536 needs more co-sponsors.

Find and contact your representative and ask them to co-sponsor and support the Fixing Egregiously Expensive Suits Act of 2026.

Tell them:

Please support and co-sponsor H.R. 9536, the Fixing Egregiously Expensive Suits Act of 2026. The Equal Access to Justice Act should protect individuals, veterans, Social Security recipients, and small businesses - not finance repeated litigation by well-funded organizations. It is time to restore EAJA to its original purpose and require serial litigants to pay their own legal bills.

Readers who wish to thank the bill’s sponsors may also contact Congresswoman Harriet Hageman and Congressman Tom Tiffany.

You may also call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask to be connected to your representative’s office.

A Long-Overdue Reckoning

We have written about this travesty dozens of times over the years, but this is the first time we have witnessed such a direct attempt to close the loopholes that make serial litigation profitable.

Congressman Tiffany explained the need for the FEES Act this way:

“EAJA was enacted to give veterans, small businesses, and everyday Americans a fair shot at challenging government overreach.

“Instead, it has become a cash machine for well-funded environmental groups that sue federal agencies and stick taxpayers with the bill. The FEES Act shuts down that gravy train and returns EAJA to the people it was meant to serve.”

Congresswoman Hageman was equally direct:

“Radical environmental groups have exploited the Equal Access to Justice Act for decades, using taxpayer dollars to fund sue-and-settle schemes that undermine responsible land management and block critical projects in the West.

“The FEES Act closes loopholes and restores the original intent of EAJA by limiting attorney fee awards to parties with real, direct stakes in outcomes, not well-funded activist organizations gaming the system at the public’s expense.”

The American people deserve a federal government that can do its congressionally mandated job without being held hostage by serial litigants whose legal expenses may ultimately be paid by the same taxpayers harmed by the delay.

For decades, forest management projects intended to reduce insect and disease infestations, protect watersheds, restore wildlife habitat, and reduce wildfire risk have been challenged, delayed, redesigned, and sometimes abandoned because of litigation.

The consequences are no longer confined to timber towns that urban America rarely sees and seldom acknowledges.

Now, people living in cities and suburbs are seeing what is happening in their National Forests.

They see hundred-foot flames, blackened forests, choking smoke, destroyed homes, dead wildlife, contaminated water supplies, closed recreation areas, and landscapes that will require generations to recover.

Anger over the consequences of serial litigation boiled over in the rural West years ago. The political groundswell necessary to force change did not materialize until millions of Americans outside the rural West began seeing and breathing those consequences for themselves.

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Who Pays the Price?

God only knows how many rural lives, family businesses, and timber, ranching, and farming communities have been damaged by lawsuits that delay responsible land management.

But the cost cannot be measured only in attorney-fee awards.

It must also include the projects that were delayed, the treatments that were never completed, the mills that closed, the jobs that disappeared, the watersheds that burned, the wildlife habitat that was lost, and the communities left beneath smoke for weeks or months at a time.

A conservation “ethic” that counts every potential disturbance before a project begins, but refuses to count what happens to the forest, wildlife, watersheds, and surrounding communities when needed work is delayed, is not ethical.

Neither is a legal system that rewards organizations for filing repeated lawsuits while leaving rural communities and taxpayers to absorb the consequences.

H.R. 9536 is only a beginning. It has not passed the House, much less the Senate, and its introduction does not guarantee that it will become law.

But it marks something we have not seen before: a direct congressional challenge to the taxpayer-funded litigation system that has obstructed forest management across the West.

Thank God for Congresswoman Harriet Hageman - a lawyer - and Congressman Tom Tiffany - a businessman - for introducing it.

The FEES Act would begin dismantling a litigation system that has been growing for 46 years and force well-funded organizations with high-powered lawyers to pay more of their own legal bills.

The “suits” may still be able to afford their bespoke tailoring and Gucci loafers.

Taxpayers simply should not be expected to buy them.

More than half of the West’s treasured National Forests are now dying, dead, or burned black.

Here’s hoping Congress finally makes the serial litigants pay their own damned bills.

In our next installment, we will look more closely at the organizations that benefit from this litigation system, the communities forced to live with its consequences, and the remarkable disconnect between the recreational landscapes these organizations market to their supporters and the forests their litigation helps leave vulnerable to insects, disease, and catastrophic wildfire.

We don’t back down when the mission is daunting; we’re in until the fire is out.