When Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called for General Electric to remove all of the chemicals it had pumped into the Hudson River, he was joining a growing chorus of environmental groups and lawmakers making the same demand. And in late March, those protesters appeared to notch a win when the Environmental Protection Agency agreed to move up a scheduled review of the situation. But that small success followed GE’s own significant victory over its environmentally conscious shareholders — achieved with help from Obama administration regulators.

According to little-noticed filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a group of GE shareholders informed the company it was submitting a resolution that, if passed, could have compelled the company to produce a full evaluation of the legal liability it could face if it does not fully clean up the polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, it leaked into the river during the mid-20th century. The resolution proposal came as GE was pressing forward with a plan to shutter its Hudson River dredging operation — a move that prompted one federal environmental agency overseeing the river to warn that the company “has not addressed nor compensated the public for injuries to natural resources” related to PCB pollution.

With that warning highlighting how GE could face future legal action, the shareholder resolution asked the company to offer “conclusions on the most responsible and cost-effective way to address” the issue.

In response to the resolution — which was backed by religious groups and the New York state pension fund, which own GE shares — GE contacted the SEC (whose chairwoman had GE as client while she was a private lawyer, according to the Associated Press). The company told the agency it intended to omit the resolution from its annual proxy statement, thereby preventing shareholders from even voting on it. As justification, the company said the shareholder resolution “relates to the company’s ordinary business operations, specifically the company’s litigation strategy.” Therefore, GE argued, the company was within its rights under the law to kill the resolution before it could even be considered by all of its shareholders.

In February, regulators at the SEC opted to side with GE management against the shareholders.