The Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against four states over the past two days, including two preemptive actions to block suits from being filed against oil companies over their purported role in climate change.
DOJ announced it had filed the preemptive lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan on Wednesday, followed by complaints against New York and Vermont on Thursday over their "climate superfund laws."
"These burdensome and ideologically motivated laws and lawsuits threaten American energy independence and our country's economic and national security," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in the release. "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."
In the Wednesday lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan, DOJ petitioned federal courts to permanently ban each state from suing fossil fuel companies in state court to seek damages for alleged climate change harms. In Michigan, state Attorney General Dana Nessel has retained three private law firms to pursue litigation but hasn't filed any complaints yet.
"As my office's anticipated lawsuit in this arena is not yet filed and our claims unknown to the administration — as conceded directly in their complaint — this lawsuit is at best frivolous and arguably sanctionable," Nessel said in a statement to media outlets. "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."
Nine Democrat-led states have already sued fossil fuel companies over climate change, The New York Times reported Thursday.
"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," Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of the Columbia University Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, told The Associated Press. "It's an intimidation tactic."
In the Thursday lawsuits, DOJ sued New York and Vermont over their laws that require fossil fuel companies to pay for emissions generated by their products. New York is seeking $75 billion from energy companies; Vermont hasn't specified what it is seeking.
These "climate superfund" laws would impose strict liability on energy companies for their worldwide activities extracting or refining fossil fuels," DOJ wrote in its release.
The suits are aligned with President Donald Trump's executive order "Protecting American Energy From State Overreach."