A federal judge has dismissed a highly unusual lawsuit, filed last year by the Trump administration, that sought to pre-emptively block Hawaii from filing its own lawsuit against oil companies over their role in climate change.
Hawaii went ahead with its lawsuit the very next day. And at the time, a range of legal experts described the Justice Department’s strategy, of suing to try to prevent someone else from suing, as weak.
In a ruling on Wednesday, Senior Judge Helen Gillmor of the U.S. District Court in Hawaii agreed. She found that the Justice Department had no legal standing to bring the case because it could not demonstrate any actual harm. The government’s claims revolved around an “abstract, theoretical future harm” that could not form a valid basis for a lawsuit, she wrote.
Judge Gillmor noted that the Trump administration’s lawsuit had been filed two days after Hawaii’s governor, Josh Green, announced during a television interview that the state had planned to sue. However, she wrote in her 30-page decision, that did not “amount to concrete harm to the United States.” Rather, the legal theory of the case hinged on an “attempt to predict the state of Hawaii’s litigation theories and tactics” and depended on “multiple layers of unpredictable future events.”
Pam Bondi, who was attorney general at the time, announced the lawsuit with fanfare a year ago. It was part of a four-part salvo: lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan trying to block them from filing climate lawsuits, and against New York and Vermont contesting their new “climate superfund” laws.
Ms. Bondi called them “burdensome and ideologically motivated laws and lawsuits” that threatened economic and national security. The Justice Department’s lawsuits, she said, were a way to carry out President Trump’s executive order on “protecting American energy from state overreach,” which warned that the policies could result in “crippling damages.”
The Justice Department and Hawaii officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The cases against New York and Vermont, over their new laws that seek to make fossil fuel companies pay for their past contributions to climate change, are continuing.
This week’s ruling on Hawaii marks a definitive end to the pre-emptive cases, which last year one expert described as “wacky” from a procedural perspective.
The Justice Department’s suit against Hawaii asked the court to declare that the planned lawsuit would have violated the Constitution and requested that state courts be barred from allowing the case to be filed. Judge Gillmor found the Justice Department had not cited “a single case” where a federal court had taken such an action to block a potential injury.
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“There is a longstanding policy against federal intervention in state judicial processes,” wrote Judge Gillmor, a Clinton appointee. Changing that practice would allow the federal government to prevent any state-court lawsuit against a private entity “so long as the United States alleges that the litigation might interfere with the goals of the executive branch.”
The judge noted that the Justice Department’s lawsuit had predicted that Hawaii’s suit would “attempt to regulate greenhouse gases and interstate pollution.” In fact, Hawaii’s complaint focused on deceptive marketing.
The judge also noted that the state lawsuit relied on a 2023 decision by the Hawaii Supreme Court allowing a similar lawsuit by the city and county of Honolulu to proceed. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review that decision last year.
In the end, Judge Gillmor dismissed the Trump administration’s case against Hawaii with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.
Michigan went ahead with its lawsuit in January, taking the unusual route of federal antitrust litigation. The state argued that the oil companies had acted as a cartel and driven up oil prices by suppressing information about the dangers of their products and thwarting the growth of renewable energy.
A federal judge in Michigan dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit a day later. Judge Jane M. Beckering came to the same conclusion as Judge Gillmor, that the lawsuit was too speculative to consider.
Hawaii’s lawsuit against oil companies remains pending in the state court where it was filed. The defendants, which include B.P., Shell, Chevron and other companies, have asked the court to pause the matter as the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in a similar lawsuit filed by the city and county of Boulder, Colo.
Courts around the country are weighing similar requests related to some three-dozen lawsuits, most filed by state and local governments, against oil companies over their role in climate change. The lawsuits seek damages for the mounting costs of coping with the effects of climate change and allege that the companies covered up what they knew about the harms created by their products.
On Wednesday, Judge Ethan P. Schulman of the Superior Court of San Francisco County granted a stay in the lawsuits by the state and seven city and county governments, which are being handled jointly in his court. He that the Supreme Court is expected to decide the Boulder case by summer 2027.
Karen Zraick covers legal affairs for the Climate desk and the courtroom clashes playing out over climate and environmental policy.
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