In the United States, a citizen suit is a lawsuit by a private citizen to enforce a statute.

This third type of citizen suit is analogous to the common law tort of public nuisance.

Environmental laws that allow citizen suits include:

Indeed, the New York bill requires advance notice of suit to the state government, which may bring an enforcement action and pre-empt the citizen suit.

In dozens of cases in Federal court, citizen suits brought a polluter into compliance.

Opponents also imply that the motivation behind citizen suits is to earn a "nice living" for lawyers.

It called for limiting the instances in which citizen suits would be allowed.

A major obstacle to most citizen suits has been lack of standing.

These "citizen suit" provisions remove environmental enforcement from the exclusive control of federal agencies, and have long been opposed by businesses and conservative interest groups.

People will finally know the status of polluters and will have the information they need to bring citizen suits.