Republican lawmakers introduced legislation in the House and Senate this week that would shield fossil fuel companies from liability lawsuits and target climate superfund policies gaining steam in states.
One of the bills, H.R. 8330, sponsored by Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.), would bar “retroactive climate liability lawsuits and other proceedings to implement or enforce an energy penalty law” and also throw out legal challenges already taking place, according to a Friday press release from Hageman’s office. The text of the bill wasn’t immediately available.
“America’s energy producers should be protected from the dangerous legal precedent that would be set by the retroactive punishment of lawful activity,” Hageman, a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in the release.
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The legislation is an attempt to further compel the federal government to wade into an issue dividing Democratic and Republican-led states.
Both New York and Vermont enacted their own climate superfund laws in the last couple of years, which require major polluters to pay for their emissions over a set period of time, potentially raising billions of dollars for the states. Lawmakers in numerous other states have proposed similar policies, but those bills have yet to make it over the finish line.
Several conservative-leaning states, meanwhile, have proposed legislation—similar to what Hageman is proposing in Congress—to shield polluters from climate litigation. Utah was the first state to enact such a law earlier this year, and state lawmakers in Iowa have sent a similar bill to Gov.
Climate advocates sound alarm
The fossil fuel industry welcomed Hageman’s bill, with representatives from the American Petroleum Institute (API) and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) calling it “legislation to stop a growing patchwork of state laws and lawsuits that threaten American energy and risk raising costs for consumers.”
“These efforts to retroactively penalize companies for lawfully meeting consumer demand are misguided and counterproductive,” API President and CEO Mike Sommers and AFPM President and CEO Chet Thompson said in a joint statement in Hageman’s release. “Congress should act decisively to reaffirm federal authority over national energy policy and end this activist-driven state overreach.”
Climate advocates, meanwhile, bashed the bill. Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for the National Polluters Pay campaign, which has been pushing climate superfund legislation at the state level, said these laws and legal challenges help make sure taxpayers don’t have to fully pay for costs stemming from extreme weather.
“No industry in this country should be above the law,” DiPaola said in a news release. “If Congress moves forward with this kind of blanket immunity, it won’t stop with Big Oil. It will open the door for any major industry facing accountability, from chemicals to tech, to demand the same special treatment.”
Outside of the superfund laws themselves, many states and localities have sued the fossil fuel industry over climate damages. A key legal debate that’s been playing out in the courts, including presently before the US Supreme Court, is whether those lawsuits should be pursued in state or federal court, or dismissed entirely.
The Trump administration has been bullish on defending the fossil fuel industry, in part by suing both Vermont and New York over their climate superfund laws. Both of those lawsuits are ongoing, and some state lawmakers have said the legal uncertainty over their fate has made legislators hesitant to move forward with similar bills.
The administration has also been active in trying to quash states’ efforts to bring litigation against polluters and filed legal challenges in multiple instances before states formally sued the industry.
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