Employees of an environmental regulation clinic that has gained consideration and help from superstar heavyweights like Mark Ruffalo and the Daily Show say the group has a tradition hostile to LGBTQ individuals, E&E News reported Thursday. Leaders of the nonprofit regulation group have reportedly additionally maintained relationships with a radical environmental group that has a historical past of creating disturbing transphobic feedback—a rhetoric that types a cornerstone of that group’s environmental viewpoints.

The agency, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), has been on the forefront of a motion to grant authorized personhood to lakes, rivers, watersheds, and different ecosystems, often called the Rights of Nature motion. But seven of the group’s 15 workers members, which embody contract attorneys, have left in current months; three of the previous staff advised E&E {that a} poisonous work tradition, together with a setting hostile to LGBTQ individuals, was one of many causes for his or her departure. Staffers advised E&E that they heard colleagues repeatedly misgender staff, together with whereas talking to them in conversations. They additionally say a coworker as soon as mused over a “connection between an increase in transgender people and an increase in chemicals in the water,” a scientifically false statement.

“Current and former staff and others have accused CELDF of having a culture that espouses transphobia,” the group mentioned in an announcement posted to its web site in February, after E&E first reached out in regards to the staffers’ allegations. “That story is false and unfounded.” (We’ve reached out to CELDF to see if the group has any additional touch upon E&E’s story and can replace this piece if we hear again.)

Also at concern are CELDF’s longstanding ties to Deep Green Resistance, a gaggle of environmental activists whose leaders have a protracted historical past of transphobia. In an FAQ posted to its web site, the group claims it isn’t “transphobic,” however the identical FAQ calls trans girls “men” and describes hormone therapy for trans youth as “eugenics.” E&E studies that considered one of CELDF’s founders, Thomas Linzey, who broke ties with the group in 2020, has a decades-long relationship with the founding father of Deep Green Resistance, Derrick Jensen, who additionally sat on the CELDF board of advisers. Jensen has a historical past of internet hosting conversations on his podcast with public figures who’ve seemingly no ties to environmental causes however do maintain transphobic viewpoints.

In January, E&E broke the story that Deep Green Resistance was a core participant in a coalition to battle in opposition to a proposed lithium mine in Nevada, which fell aside after the group’s transphobic views got here to gentle. CELDF staffers who spoke to E&E mentioned they weren’t made conscious of Deep Green Resistance’s affiliation with the motion to battle the mine, whilst CELDF was supporting their efforts in Nevada—and as CELDF staff have been working to search out methods to make the group extra inclusive and distance the group from its previous ties to Jensen.

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CELDF’s efforts have gotten plenty of high-profile consideration over the previous decade. In 2020, actor Mark Ruffalo produced and narrated a film about CELDF’s work, whereas the Daily Show additionally profiled their efforts in 2019. CELDF has additionally gotten funding from Patagonia and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

Almost all the mainstream press that has lined the group’s efforts has not famous its ties to Deep Green Resistance. In 2019, Earther was a type of shops: We ran a bit that includes interviews with each Linzey and Will Falk, a Deep Green Resistance member. Less than a month after our story ran, Jensen and different Deep Green Resistance leaders—together with Max Wilbert, who partnered with Falk on the trouble in opposition to the lithium mine—authored an essay for a Canadian journal that started with the passage “Okay, hands up everyone who predicted that when Big Brother arrived, he’d be wearing a dress, hauling anyone who refuses to wax his ladyballs before a human rights tribunal, and bellowing ‘It’s Ma’am!’”

The thought of a left-wing environmental group holding deeply transphobic viewpoints might appear to be a fringe concern that has nothing to do with the bigger causes they’re preventing for. But not solely is transphobia—which works in opposition to fashionable science and drugs—a cornerstone of some teams’ environmental rhetoric, however this rhetoric additionally opens the door for conservative, anti-environmental forces to benefit from the motion.

“Right-wing figures have been really eager to seek out these anti-trans left-wing voices to say, look, this is a mainstream issue, even when you see most people are just not that activated by it,” Ari Drennen, the LGBTQ Program Director at nonprofit watchdog Media Matters, advised Earther in January.