Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“Service”), and Biden-Harris Administration officials over the unlawful listing of seven freshwater mussel species under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”).
“The Biden-Harris Administration is, once again, weaponizing environmental law to target the State of Texas,” said Attorney General Paxton. “We are suing to block their latest attempt to undermine the Texas economy and unlawfully interfere with State-led efforts to protect our wildlife and natural resources.”
In June 2024, the Service published a final rule listing the Guadalupe Fatmucket, Texas Fatmucket, Guadalupe Orb, Texas Pimpleback, Balcones Spike, False Spike, and Texas Fawnsfoot mussel species as threatened or endangered, triggering regulatory restrictions over certain habitat areas and conservation programs. However, the federal government failed to follow the specific procedures and requirements related to endangered species listings as stipulated by the ESA.
Federal law requires the Service to consider Texas’s existing efforts to protect the species, to base its listing determinations solely on the best available data, and to issue its determinations in a timely fashion. Additionally, when designating habitat protections for a listed species, the Service must consider the economic impact of such protections. The Service failed to meet these requirements and instead forced restrictive regulations on Texas that will unduly limit economic development and overturn local efforts to preserve the species’ habitats.
To read the filing, click here.