Biography
Michael J. Myers is Senior Counsel for Air Pollution and Climate Change Litigation in the Environmental Protection Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s Office. In that position, he works with a team of lawyers and scientists in regularly tracking the Trump Administration’s attempts to roll back environmental and energy laws and is instrumental in devising legal strategies to combat those actions, including coordinating efforts within the Attorney General’s office and with other states and municipalities.
Prior to becoming Senior Counsel in 2017, he served for ten years as Chief of the Bureau’s Affirmative Litigation Section in Albany, in which he supervised and participated in litigation enforcing state and federal air, water, and waste laws. He has overseen much of the Bureau’s climate change cases over the past fifteen years, including litigation over EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations for fossil-fueled power plants, and argued in September 2016 before an en banc D.C. Circuit Court in the Clean Power Plan litigation. Mr. Myers also worked on the successful defense of New York’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a program to cut carbon dioxide pollution from power plants that serves as a national model. Prior to becoming Section Chief in 2007, he worked as a line AAG in the Bureau, beginning in 1999. He has served as lead counsel on several multistate challenges to EPA rules in the D.C. Circuit, including those concerning air quality standards (particulate matter, ozone) and New Source Review, and has litigated several enforcement cases against in-state and out-of-state power plants for Clean Air Act violations.
In 2013, the ABA’s Section of Environment, Energy and Resources named Mr. Myers government attorney of the year for his accomplishments in environmental litigation on behalf of New York. He is a graduate of Vermont Law School and Cornell University.