Recently, Donald Trump nominated one of his personal lawyers, Justin Smith, to serve as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. In his announcement on Truth Social, Trump noted the “big role” Smith played in securing Trump a victory in the presidential immunity case. With his nomination coming up for a vote in the Senate, a closer look at Smith’s record reveals a career littered with concerning cases across a range of issue areas. His record on environmental issues reveals a pattern of protecting big corporations over everyday people.
While working in leadership roles for Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (now a senator), Smith advanced pro-Big Oil & Gas policies. For example, Smith worked to ensure that the Environmental Protection Agency would not be able to move forward with its ban on the use of chlorpyrifos in food crops. Chlorpyrifos can cause a range of health issues, including Parkinson’s and cancer. Smith’s work directly stood in the way of common-sense environmental regulations and left Missourians to cope with the harmful effects of a toxic pesticide that could be found in their drinking water and food.
Additionally, in Missouri Coalition v. State of Missouri and Clean Water Commission of the State of Missouri, Smith wielded his power to weaken an important environmental regulatory body, the Missouri Clean Water Commission. This commission is charged with ensuring fair and proper standards for water quality across the state and issuing permits to farmers and industrial facilities. Weakening this regulatory body once again serves the only audience that Smith seems most concerned about: big corporations opposed to environmental safeguards that they think will hurt their bottom line.
Smith also challenged a regulation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that would require the social cost of carbon to be considered before any approval of additional gas pipelines. The social cost of carbon quantifies the harm from more carbon pollution as a dollar figure. Instead of considering community and environmental impacts, Smith and the governor were more concerned with how the regulations would subject potential polluters to more “regulations and red tape.”
Smith has made it clear that he will use whatever power he gains to serve himself, Trump, and the causes that matter to them above all else. The thousands of people who live in the Eighth Circuit deserve a fair, just, and independent member of the judiciary, not a Trump loyalist who will prioritize Big Polluters’ bottom lines over the health, wellness, and safety of those he is supposed to serve.
