Lawfare! How Courts & State Legislatures Influence Climate Action – CleanTechnica

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In May, Misti Leon, a resident of the state of Washington, filed suit in state court alleging a number of oil companies were responsible for the punishing heat that led to the death of her mother. On the day Julie Leon died, the temperature in Seattle reached 108°F — the highest ever recorded in that city. An attribution study released shortly after the event by a team of climate scientists claimed the 2021 heat dome would have been “virtually impossible without human-caused climate change,” according to a report by NPR.

For more than a decade, various states, counties, and cities have been battling Big Oil in court in an effort to get them to pay for the damage they have caused to the environment, damage that has cost them billions in health care expenses for their citizens and required them to spend billions more to protect themselves, from rising sea levels, brutal wildfires, and infrastructure upgrades needed to protect people from the effects of extreme heat, torrential rains, and severe drought.

What is different about the Leon lawsuit is that for the first time, it is not a political entity suing on behalf of all its citizens, it is one person suing Big Oil specifically for harm done to a single individual. That is unprecedented in the US — although, a similar suit by a group of senior women in Switzerland in the European Court of Human Rights took a similar position.

The women, all of whom are 64 or older, filed a lawsuit last year with the European Court of Human Rights claiming that warming global temperatures are having a disproportionate effect on them and other women their age. The latest scientific research indicates that older women in Switzerland died at the highest rates from heat in the summer 2022. The group says that 60% of the deaths would have been avoided in a world not affected by the higher temperatures brought on by the climate crisis. The court did not rule in their favor, however.

To date, none of those legal actions has been successful. Taking a page from the Big Tobacco playbook, the fossil fuel industry has fattened the wallets of numerous law firms who have delayed the proceedings again and again or tied up the process with endless pretrial maneuverings. When the United States judicial system adopted new rules of civil procedure in the 1960s that did away with the antiquated process inherited from English common law, they were expected to speed the pace and lower the costs of litigation. Exactly the opposite has happened, proving once again that no good deed goes unpunished.

Lawfare & Climate

Elon Musk likes to scream about lawfare, but it is a tactic that has been perfected by his conservative peeps, so he really has little to complain about. What he means is he is all in favor of legal warfare as long as the result is in his favor — which is what we have come to expect from bullies.

Lawfare is precisely what the failed US administration is relying on as it hustles to defend its principle client — fossil fuel companies. It used to be the federal government fought for the rights of all citizens, but that outdated concept is now firmly in the rearview mirror, as the government is now solidly in favor of destroying the rights of citizens so it can extort enormous political donations from oil, methane, and coal companies.

Six months ago, New York followed the example set by Vermont when it enacted a Superfund law of its own. That law shifts the costs of climate adaptation from the citizens of New York to the fossil fuel companies that are most responsible for the pollution that has caused changes in the Earth’s climate. By creating a Climate Change Adaptation Cost Recovery Program, the law ensures those companies contribute to the funding of critical infrastructure investments such as coastal protection and flood mitigation systems that enhance the climate resilience of communities across the state.

On May 1, the Justice Department (talk about a misnomer!) sued both Vermont and New York to block enforcement of their climate Superfund laws. Currently, Vermont treasurer Michael Pieciak and the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources are working to find the cost of environmental damage that can be linked to individual companies’ fossil fuel products from 1995 until 2024, a calculation that will rely heavily on climate attribution science like the Climate Shift Index created by Climate Central.

“Did I expect it? No. Am I surprised? Also, no,” State Senator Anne Watson, a sponsor of the Vermont Climate Superfund Law, told Inside Climate News. She said the speed of the response from the government “was really heartening, weirdly, because it tells me that we have hit upon a strategy that is effective, that is getting the attention of the fossil fuel industry, that they know this is a legitimate mechanism to hold them accountable.”

Watson added the legislation, which is modeled on the federal Superfund law, is designed to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the damage it has caused and lighten the burden of a warming climate. “We’re moving forward with it. People are having to shoulder a huge financial burden that they shouldn’t otherwise have to bear because of the products from the fossil fuel industry.”

Ben Edgerly Walsh, the Climate and Energy Program director for the Vermont Public Interest Group, sees the lawsuit as a direct response to a meeting between the CEOs of major fossil fuel companies and the flailing president in March, in which the executives pleaded for federal help to protect them from various legal challenges.

 A Political Shield Against Climate Action

CleanTechnica readers will recall a meeting last year between the Republican candidate and many of those same executives in which they were instructed by the candidate to pony up one billion dollars for the campaign. In exchange, the new administration would give them everything they wanted. Previously, this would have been viewed as criminal behavior, but not anymore.

“Frankly, the president is using the Department of Justice as a political shield for his allies in the oil industry,” Walsh said. “It’s incredibly disappointing to see the U.S. system of justice used that way. It’s unprecedented.” In April, one of the 4,612 executive orders from the White House so far this year ordered the Attorney General of the United States to “take action to stop the enforcement of state laws that unreasonably burden domestic energy development.”

As further proof of how dysfunctional the US has become, 24 states have joined the legal actions of the federal government against Vermont, New York, Hawai’i, and others. They would happily cede their individual sovereignty to the federal government, despite the fact that they are the states that complain most bitterly about “government overreach.” The hypocrisy of these sunshine patriots is simply stunning.

Bankrupt Your Opponent

Here is what lawfare is really all about — bankrupting your opponent. The objective is to make the process so costly that one side or the other gives up. Patrick Parenteau, professor emeritus at the Vermont Law and Graduate School who is a former counsel to the New England EPA, warns that the cost of defending against the government lawsuit will exceed any financial benefit the state may ultimately receive. He said the Vermont legislature did not “fully appreciated just how complicated and expensive it’s going to get.”

The basis of the administration claims is that the US is facing an “energy emergency,” which is a rather stunning (and stupid) thing to say when it is now the largest producer of fossil fuels in the world. Charity Clark, the Vermont Attorney General, is trying to prove the claim that there is an energy emergency is false. 14 other states, including Michigan, have joined in her claim.

“There is no energy emergency in this country. American energy production is at an all-time high, and this is an attempt by the administration to illegally circumvent environmental protections that keep us healthy and protect our rivers, wildlife, and other natural resources,” Clark said in a statement.

Environmental Groups Sue EPA

On June 25, 2025, a coalition of more than 20 climate groups, Tribes, and municipalities filed a class action lawsuit in US District Court for the District of Columbia against the EPA contesting the revocation of $3 billion in funding for various climate and environmental programs in disadvantaged communities. The plaintiffs argue the EPA violated Congress’ spending power and legislative authority by eliminating the Environmental and Climate Justice Program authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Clean Air Act.

“The EPA’s termination of the program is unlawful,” the complaint says. “It violates the bedrock separation-of-powers principles by effectively repealing a congressional enactment and impounding funds based on nothing more than the President’s disagreement with policies Congress duly enacted.”

The suit recognizes that “this administration’s wholesale decisions are having significant impacts on communities across the country that are working together to solve environmental problems in their communities,” Ben Grillot, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, told Inside Climate News, “The administration’s decision to do this was unlawful and is not based on the merits of the projects but on a disagreement with Congress, which is a clear violation of the separation of powers.”

One project that would have been funded by the federal grants was in Pound, Virginia, a community subject to severe flooding. The money was scheduled to fund the construction of a riverwalk that would prevent floodwaters from disturbing dilapidated buildings and dispersing harmful substances associated with mold and asbestos. Emma Kelly of Appalachia Voices said “People were disillusioned before we got these grants. This area has a very long history of being extracted from, being overlooked, being looked down upon, and our organization … has spent several years working with these counties to build up trust.

“If you cannot count on an awarded grant from the federal government, who can you count on? That is supposed to be the most reliable source that you can get. So people, I think, felt foolish and as if their time had been wasted, and if this wasn’t going to happen there’s not going to be anything else coming down the pipeline.”

The White Supremacy Religion

The administration listed one of the reasons for cancelling the grants was to dismantle the diversity, equity, and inclusion provisions it said the money would pay for. Why should the government give money away to shiftless poor people who don’t have enough gumption to go out and get a J O B, when there are so many needy billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk (and many others) who could make better use of the money? As Martin Luther King once observed, “We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.”

Now that the Supreme Court has totally caved to the Project 2025 agenda (And why not? 6 of the judges were promoted to the court by the same organization that hatched that 900+ page manifesto of grievance.), the people of the United States have now officially become second class citizens in their own country. Whatever the outcome of these lawsuits, some of the litigants are assured the Supreme Court will protect them if the worst thing happens.

Project 2025 is little more than a giant con where the people of the United States are the whale being set up for the fall. If reliance on the courts to do the right thing is the only thing the people can hope for, then the odds are high they will be severely disappointed. The Constitution makes one fatal mistake. It assumes those in government will act responsibly and in good faith. Any hope of that happening with the current crew in Washington is rapidly fading.