Eight environmental groups on Wednesday filed what will likely be the first of many lawsuits to block the Trump administrations sweeping overhaul of the Endangered Species Act .

The 37-page complaint , filed by Earthjustice in the U.S District Court of Northern California, comes just over a week after the Interior Department finalized new rules that significantly weaken the 1973 law, arguably Americas most important tool for protecting imperiled plants and animals.

The ESA rule changes make it easier for federal agencies to remove species from the protected list, allow for economic impacts to be considered when making decisions about granting species protection, and limit agencies ability to account for the impacts of future climate change. They also diminish protections for future threatened species and revise how agencies go about designating habitat as critical to species long-term survival.

The rollback comes amid a human-caused biodiversity crisis that has pushed up to 1 million species around the globe to the brink of extinction .

The lawsuit argues that the Trump administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to analyze the impact of its revisions and that the final rules include changes that werent in the initial proposal and that the public never had a chance to weigh in on.

NEPA requires federal agencies to look before they leap, Drew Caputo, the vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife and oceans at Earthjustice, told HuffPost. They just leapt.

The revised regulations violate the plain language and overarching purpose of the ESA the complaint reads.

Earthjustice is representing seven other environmental groups in the lawsuit, including Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The same group of plaintiffs has also filed a notice of intent to sue over other aspects of the overhaul.

In an emailed statement, Interior spokesman Nick Goodwin said it is unsurprising that those who repeatedly seek to weaponize the Endangered Species Act instead of use it as a means to recover imperiled species would choose to sue.

We will see them in court, and we will be steadfast in our implementation of this important act with the unchanging goal of conserving and recovering species, he said.