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Trump Climate Suits Targeting States Seen as Shockingly Flimsy [1]
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Date: 2025-05-05 09:30:00+00:00
The Trump administration’s preemptive lawsuits against states pursuing climate litigation are unlikely to be taken seriously in court, attorneys say.
Judges are almost certain to throw out the Justice Department’s cases filed last week against Hawaii and Michigan, which were sued over then-unfinished plans to take oil companies to court for their role in climate change, said Daniel Esty, a Yale Law School professor and Connecticut’s former energy and environment commissioner.
“There has never been in our legal system any right to sue on hypothetical things,” Esty said. “It’s bordering on bad faith.”
Hawaii has since decided to forge ahead with its climate change suit, while Michigan’s still doesn’t exist in the public record.
The Trump administration’s 24-hour lawsuit spree targeting climate friendly states may not curb ambitious policies and legal strategies writ large, but it certainly shows an unprecedented level of vindictiveness that could rattle states, said Sam Sankar, an attorney and senior vice president for programs at Earthjustice.
“It’s shocking to see the federal government leaping to the oil industry’s defense,” Sankar said. “That’s a terrible irony in a time where we are more concerned about the environmental toll of the oil industry than ever before.”
The lawsuits come just over three weeks after President Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department to go after state climate policies and litigation that could curb energy deployment, violate the Constitution, or usurp the federal government’s authority.
“These burdensome and ideologically motivated laws and lawsuits threaten American energy independence and our country’s economic and national security,” US Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement on May 1.
Climate Deception Lawsuits
The Justice Department first sued Michigan and Hawaii April 30, saying the states’ own plans to sue fossil fuel companies for alleged climate change deception would impose an excessive burden on energy producers and raise consumer prices.
In theory, plaintiffs could preempt a lawsuit if they could show that the mere filing would cause immediate harm. But the federal government didn’t make that argument, Sankar said.
“I would be shocked if this went through the normal DOJ processes—I suspect that it came from a political operative at the White House,” he said. “I can guarantee you that a court will toss these out.”
Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez on Thursday rebuked the administration’s lawsuit, calling it “deeply disturbing” and a “direct attack on Hawaii’s rights as a sovereign state.” She filed her climate change case in the state’s First Circuit Court the same day.
The Hawaii state case joins cases from Honolulu and Maui, which are still pending in local benches after lengthy procedural wrangling over whether the cases should be punted to federal jurisdiction. Honolulu’s lawsuit was moved forward by the Hawaii Supreme Court in October 2023, and is now closer to trial after the US Supreme Court refused to weigh in on the case in January.
Hawaii’s lawsuits are part of a long line of similar litigation—now more than two dozen strong—against oil and gas companies that have been rolling through courts since 2018. States, cities, and counties have used a variety of claims to try and hold companies accountable for what they claim are campaigns of deception around climate change that they used to sell more fossil fuels.
The litigation has seen mixed results in recent months, with multiple courts in Maryland, Delaware, and elsewhere ruling that the plaintiffs don’t have standing for some or all of their claims. But Hawaii and Massachusetts courts have handed victories to plaintiffs, pushing at least a few lawsuits closer to trials that could reveal a potential landslide of information on what companies did and didn’t know about climate change.
Climate Superfund Laws
The Justice Department followed its preemptive lawsuits with two more actions against Vermont and New York on May 1. The states created a “transparent monetary-extraction scheme” by enacting laws seeking retroactive fossil fuel fees for climate change damage, according to the filings.
The same day, a coalition of red states led by West Virginia also sued Vermont over the same law, calling it a “retroactive and extraterritorial shakedown.” The same coalition sued New York in February.
The American Petroleum Institute—which has been a plaintiff in “climate Superfund” litigation and a defendant in recent climate change deception litigation—praised the Justice Department’s decision.
“The Trump Administration gets it,” general counsel Ryan Meyers said in a statement. “This cadre of state lawsuits and laws is not only an attack on the companies that provide Americans with affordable and reliable energy, but also an unconstitutional affront to the federal government’s role in setting national energy and climate policy.”
But Michael Wall, chief litigation officer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a press release that the government’s cases ignore states’ constitutionally protected rights.
“The Department of Justice should be suing the corporate polluters that are poisoning our communities; rather than suing states trying to protect their own residents,” Wall said.
The Trump administration’s intent was to create a chilling effect on state climate action, said Justin Balik, Evergreen Action’s vice president for states. But ambitious state policy will continue even if the federal government fights back, he said.
A small number of states might get spooked, but a far larger number of states will know their rights and keep going, said Esty, the Yale law professor and former Connecticut commissioner.
“This is obviously going to be litigated, and I predict the states will win,” he said.
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https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/trump-climate-suits-targeting-states-seen-as-shockingly-flimsy-48
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