The U.S. Justice Department filed lawsuits against four states this week, claiming their climate actions conflict with federal authority and President Donald Trump’s energy dominance agenda.
The DOJ on Wednesday filed lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan over their planned legal action against fossil fuel companies for harms caused by climate change. On Thursday, the DOJ sued New York and Vermont, challenging their climate superfund laws that would force fossil fuel companies to pay into state-based funds based on previous greenhouse gas emissions.
“These burdensome and ideologically motivated laws and lawsuits threaten American energy independence and our country’s economic and national security,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “The Department of Justice is working to ‘Unleash American Energy’ by stopping these illegitimate impediments to the production of affordable, reliable energy that Americans deserve.”
The DOJ lawsuits, which legal experts say are unprecedented, mark the latest of the Trump administration’s attacks on environmental work and raises concern over states’ abilities to retain the power to take climate action without federal opposition.
DOJ’s court filings said the states’ plans and policies “impermissibly regulate out-of-state greenhouse gas emissions and obstruct the Clean Air Act’s comprehensive federal-state framework and EPA’s regulatory discretion.”
The DOJ cited the Clean Air Act — a federal law authorizing the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate air emissions — saying it creates “a program for regulating air pollution in the United States and “displaces” the ability of States to regulate greenhouse gas emissions beyond their borders.”
DOJ argued Wednesday that Hawaii and Michigan are violating the intent of the Act that enables the EPA authority to set nationwide standards for greenhouse gases, citing the states’ expected litigation against oil and gas companies for alleged climate damage.
Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel last year tapped private law firms to go after the fossil fuel industry for negatively affecting the state’s climate and environment.
Meanwhile, Democratic Hawaii Governor Josh Green plans to target fossil fuel companies that he said should take responsibility for their role in the state’s climate impacts, including 2023’s deadly Lahaina wildfire.
When burned, fossil fuels release emissions such as carbon dioxide that warm the planet.
A spokesperson for Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office deferred to Nessel when asked for comment.
“This lawsuit is at best frivolous and arguably sanctionable,” Nessel said in a statement, which noted that Michigan hasn’t filed a lawsuit. “If the White House or Big Oil wish to challenge our claims, they can do so when our lawsuit is filed; they will not succeed in any attempt to preemptively bar our access to make our claims in the courts. I remain undeterred in my intention to file this lawsuit the President and his Big Oil donors so fear.”
Green’s office and the Hawaii Attorney General’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Meanwhile, Thursday’s filings called the states’ Superfund Acts — modeled on the 45-year-old federal superfund law enacted to address the harm associated with hazardous waste sites — “a transparent monetary-extraction scheme.” Trump has suggested the superfund laws “extort” payments from energy entities.
New York is looking for $75 billion and has been previously challenged by 22 states for the law; Vermont hasn’t specified what it is seeking. Both laws were approved last year.
“By purporting to regulate the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on climate change, the Act necessarily reaches far beyond” the states of New York and Vermont, the DOJ argued, saying the states are incorrectly looking to regulate nationwide and global airspace.
The offices of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Attorney General Letitia James, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott and Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark did not immediately return emailed requests for comment.
“At a time when States should be contributing to a national effort to secure reliable sources of domestic energy,” all four states are choosing “to stand in the way,” all four filings said.
In its filings, the DOJ repeated the Republican president’s claims of America’s energy emergency and crisis.
But legal experts raised concern over the government’s arguments.
Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of the Columbia University Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said usual procedure is the DOJ asking a court to intervene in pending environmental litigation — as is the case in some instances across the country.
While this week’s suits are consistent with Trump’s plans to oppose state actions that interfere with energy dominance, “it’s highly unusual,” Gerrard told The Associated Press of the cases of Hawaii and Michigan. “What we expected is they would intervene in the pending lawsuits, not to try to preempt or prevent a lawsuit from being filed. It’s an aggressive move in support of the fossil fuel industry.
“It raises all kinds of eyebrows,” he added. “It’s an intimidation tactic, and it’s telling the fossil fuel companies how much Trump loves them.”
Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has previously consulted on climate litigation, said this week’s lawsuits look “like DOJ grasping at straws,” noting that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said his agency is seeking to overturn a finding under the Clean Air Act that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
“So on the one hand the U.S. is saying Michigan, and other states, can’t regulate greenhouse gases because the Clean Air Act does so and therefore preempts states from regulating,” Carlson said. “On the other hand the U.S. is trying to say that the Clean Air Act should not be used to regulate. The hypocrisy is pretty stunning.”
Trump’s administration has aggressively targeted climate policy in the name of fossil fuel investment. Federal agencies have announced plans to bolster coal power, roll back landmark water and air regulations, block renewable energy sources and double down on oil and gas expansion.
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