Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit public interest law firm and grassroots organizing organization, assists people and communities to assert their fundamental rights to democratic local self-governance and sustainability, and to recognize the rights of nature.  Today, over 130 communities in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, New York, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Virginia have adopted Legal Defense Fund-drafted laws.  Through this work, we have become the principal advisor to communities and municipal governments struggling to transition from merely regulating corporate harms to stopping those harms by asserting local, democratic control directly over corporations.