May 2 (UPI) — The Trump administration has sued four Democrat-led states over their climate change laws that seek compensation from oil companies to cover environmental damages, attracting criticism that the Justice Department is standing up for fossil fuel companies over its own citizens.
The Justice Department filed lawsuits Thursday against New York State and Vermont over their so-called climate superfund laws, which were passed last year to require fossil fuel companies to pay compensation for environmental degradation. The funds would be used to support climate adaptive infrastructure projects.
Those lawsuits were filed a day after federal prosecutors sued Hawaii and Michigan pursing litigation against fossil fuel companies for damages to the environment.
The Trump administration argues that these law and efforts to seek penalties from fossil fuel companies are illegal, claiming they are preempted by the Clean Air Act and violate the Constitution.
“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 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 lawsuits follow President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order in April directing Bondi to identify state and local laws, regulations, actions, policies and practices that negatively affect domestic energy resources that and may be unconstitutional.
She was specifically told to prioritize investigations into laws and policies that purport “to address ‘climate change’ or involving ‘environmental, social and governance’ initiatives, or ‘environmental justice,’ carbon or ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions and funds to collect carbon penalties or carbon taxes,” the April 8 executive order states.
The executive order — and the lawsuits — seeks to address the national energy emergency Trump declared on his first day in office, though he has received criticism for this declaration, with environmental groups arguing that such an emergency is questionable when the United States is the world’s leading producer of oil and gas and a top energy exporter.
The Trump administration accused New York State and Vermont of standing in the way of “a national effort to secure reliable sources of domestic energy,” while describing their superfund acts as “a transparent monetary-extraction scheme.”
The federal prosecutors also describe the laws as an attempt to usurp federal powers.
“The Superfund Act is a brazen attempt to grab power from the federal government and force citizens of other states and nations to foot the bill for its infrastructure wish list,” both of lawsuits, which are similar, state.
“Along the way, the Superfund Act intrudes on, and interferes with, the federal government’s exclusive role in foreign affairs, which includes sensitive policy questions encompassing environmental concerns, economic and trade policies and national security.”
The lawsuits against Michigan and Hawaii focus on their intentions to sue oil and gas companies for contributing to climate change and damaging their states, framing their yet-to-be-filed litigation as an effort “to extract large sums of money from fossil fuel companies.
Both Hawaii and Michigan rebuked the Trump administration for interfering in their lawsuits, with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel accusing the president of being willing to “answer any and every beck and call from his Big Oil campaign donors.”
She added that this was an “unprecedented preemptive intervention.”
“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,” she said in a statement.
“I remain undeterred in my intention to file this lawsuit the President and his Big Oil donors so fear.”
According to a January report by advocacy group Climate Power, fossil fuel interests spent $96 million in direct donations to support Trump’s presidential campaign. It was also reported during the presidential campaign that Trump had urged oil executives to donate $1 billion to his campaign.
Hawaii’s attorney general, Anne Lopez, similarly rejected the Trump administration’s lawsuit, stating they have an obligation to the people of the state to “fight deceptive practices from fossil fuel companies.”
“The use of the United States Department of Justice to fight on behalf of the fossil fuel industry is deeply disturbing and is a direct attack on Hawaii’s rights as a sovereign state,” Lopez said in a statement.
“The state of Hawaii will not be deterred from moving forward with our climate deception lawsuit.”
