Trump administration sues Hawaii, 3 other states to block climate lawsuits, laws

WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump’s administration said today it is suing four Democratic-led states to prevent them from enforcing “burdensome and ideologically motivated” laws and pursuing lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry over the harms caused by climate change.

The U.S. Department of Justice, in a pair of lawsuits, argued that recent laws New York and Vermont adopted requiring oil companies to contribute billions of dollars into funds to pay for damage caused by climate change were unconstitutional.

New York alone hopes to raise $75 billion through its “superfund” law, which the Justice Department called a “transparent monetary-extraction scheme” designed to fund the state’s infrastructure projects with money from out-of-state businesses.

The Justice Department filed those cases today, a day after it launched two preemptive cases seeking to stop Hawaii and Michigan from filing planned lawsuits against major oil companies over climate change, cases the administration said would imperil domestic energy production.

Neither state had sued yet when the Justice Department filed its suit late on Wednesday.

Hawaii Attorney General Anne E. Lopez filed the state’s lawsuit against oil companies today. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel last year retained law firms to represent it in climate change-related litigation.

The litigation filed by the Justice Department Wednesday against Hawaii and Michigan said the intended lawsuits by the states constitute an “extraordinary extraterritorial reach” that would unlawfully undermine federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and the administration’s foreign policy objectives.

Numerous Democratic-led states have in recent years filed similar lawsuits against companies including Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell and BP, accusing them of deceiving the public about the role fossil fuels have played in causing climate change.

The Hawaii complaint names those five oil companies and Aloha Petroleum, Phillips 66, Woodside Energy Hawaii, BHP Hawaii, Equilon, and the American Petroleum Institute.

The 31-page civil complaint against Hawaii seeks to “prevent each state from suing fossil fuel companies in state court to seek damages for alleged climate change harms,” according to a Justice Department news release.

The Justice Department’s four lawsuits follow a pledge by Trump’s campaign during the 2024 election to “stop the wave of frivolous litigation from environmental extremists.”

The Justice Department in the lawsuits cited an executive order that the Republican president signed on his first day back in office on Jan. 20, declaring a national energy emergency to speed permitting of energy projects, rolling back environmental protections and withdrawing the United States from an international pact to fight climate change.

“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 Justice Department’s lawsuits said all four states are standing in the way of the administration’s efforts to boost the domestic energy supply.

Trump recently directed Attorney General Pamela Bondi to take action to stop the enforcement of state laws that “unreasonably burden domestic energy development so that energy will once again be reliable and affordable for all Americans.”

“Hawaii intends to sue fossil fuel companies to seek damages for alleged climate change harms,” read the complaint that quoted a KHON news story about the intentions of state attorneys to sue oil companies. “At a time when States should be contributing to a national effort to secure reliable sources of domestic energy, Hawaii is choosing to stand in the way. This Nation’s Constitution and laws do not tolerate this interference.”

The lawsuit against Hawaii and Michigan and separate actions against New York and Vermont “advance President Trump’s directive” outlined Executive Order 14260, Protecting American Energy from State Overreach.

“These burdensome and ideologically motivated laws and lawsuits threaten American energy independence and our country’s economic and national security,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi, 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 complaint alleges that these anticipated actions are “preempted by the Clean Air Act and violate the Constitution” and that the lawsuits burden energy production and “force the American people to pay more for energy, and make the United States less able to defend itself from hostile foreign actors.”

Lopez, in a statement today, said that the state has an “obligation to the people of Hawaii, to do everything in our power to fight deceptive practices from these fossil fuel companies that erode Hawaii’s public health, natural resources and economy.”

“The federal lawsuit filed by the Justice Department attempts to block Hawaii from holding the fossil fuel industry responsible for deceptive conduct that caused climate change damage to Hawaii,” said Green.

Gov. Josh Green pointed to the “devastating climate-driven, wildfire-initiated disaster on Maui” that resulted in the “tragic loss of 102 lives” and billions of dollars in damage.

“This climate-related wildfire was the deadliest in United States history in more than a century,” said Green.

Civil complaints filed today in U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of New York and for the District of Vermont challenge “climate superfund” laws, alleging they impose strict liability on energy companies for their worldwide activities extracting or refining fossil fuels.

The laws assess penalties for those “businesses’ purported contributions to harms” that those states “allegedly” are experiencing from climate change.

Attorneys general for the other three states did not respond to requests for comment.

The laws New York and Vermont adopted to create an industry-financed “superfunds” are already the subject of ongoing legal challenges by Republican-led states and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which have sued to block the novel laws.

Lawsuits filed by other states similar to the ones Michigan and Hawaii intend to bring have accused energy companies of creating a public nuisance or violating state laws by concealing from the public for decades the fact that burning fossil fuels would lead to climate change. The companies have denied wrongdoing.

Many of the cases remain in their early stages after years of litigation by oil companies over whether the states could sue in state courts rather than federal courts.

The U.S. Supreme Court in March rejected a bid by 19 Republican-led states, led by Alabama, to block five Democratic-led states from pursuing such lawsuits. The Republican-led states raised similar claims as the Justice Department’s case.

Honolulu Star-Advertiser reporter Peter Boylan contributed to this report.