Florida panthers, California condors, piping plovers, black-footed ferrets and arroyo toads are just some of the animals a lawsuit claims the EPA fails to protect when it approves pesticides.

The Federal district court in San Francisco held a hearing on Friday over The Center for Biological Diversity and Pesticides Action Network North America lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency failure to assess the effects of pesticides. 

The lawsuits argues the pesticides are harmful to more than 100 endangered and threatened species and says documents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and EPA, as well as peer-reviewed studies, show that these species may be hurt by dozens of approved pesticides.

"For decades, the EPA has turned a blind eye to the disastrous effects pesticides have on America's rarest species," said Collette Adkins Giese, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. "With more than a billion pounds of pesticides applied each year in this country -- the highest pesticide usage rate in the world -- the harms to America's endangered wildlife are enormous."

The lawsuit claims the EPA has registered 18,000 pesticides for use in the United States without conducting legally required consultation with expert federal wildlife agencies to find out which pesticides will harm protected wildlife. An example they claim of the agencies' failure to protect people, animals and the environment is its continued registration of the herbicide atrazine, a widespread pollutant of groundwater and drinking water. The chemical has been banned by the European Union and recent research shows a linked to increases in cancer, birth defects and endocrine disruption.

During the two-hour hearing in court today, Judge Spero said the lawsuit appeared to challenge EPA's earlier approvals of pesticides' ingredients, which under federal law have to be appealed within 60 days of the agency's actions. This could mean the lawsuit was filed too late and is likely to be dismissed.