Friends of the Earth v. Export-Import Bank of the United States

Challenge to March 2025 final approval of $4.7 billion Export-Import Bank loan to subsidize construction of liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique.

Friends of the Earth, Justiça Ambiental, and individual plaintiffs who live, farm, and fish near a liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique filed a new lawsuit challenging the March 2025 approval by the board of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) of a $4.7 billion loan to subsidize the project’s construction. On the same day, the plaintiffs filed a proposed amended and supplemental complaint in a lawsuit filed in 2025. The two complaints were intended to cure standing issues after the D.C. Circuit concluded the organizational plaintiffs lacked standing. The complaints asserted identical claims that EXIM violated the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945 and the Administrative Procedure Act, including by failing to evaluate the project’s climate-related risks and impacts. The individual plaintiffs also asserted new claims of negligence, conversion, trespass, public nuisance, private nuisance, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and unjust enrichment against the defendant-intervenor TotalEnergies EP Mozambique Area 1, Limitada (Total), the TotalEnergies SE subsidiary operating the project. Total voluntarily intervened in the 2025 lawsuit. The new complaints did not assert a NEPA claim; the D.C. Circuit had found that the organizations were unlikely to succeed on the merits of such a claim.