Latest news with #climatelawsuits
New York Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
A Court Debates Whether a Climate Lawsuit Threatens National Security
Two teams of high-powered lawyers clashed this week in Charleston, S.C., over a global-warming question with major implications: Do climate lawsuits against oil companies threaten national security, as President Trump has claimed? In the lawsuit, the City of Charleston is arguing that oil companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron and about a dozen others carried out a sophisticated, decades-long misinformation campaign to cover up what they knew about the dangers of climate change. There are some three dozen similar cases around the country, and recently Mr. Trump issued an executive order calling the lawsuits a threat to national security, saying they could lead to crippling damages. The hearings in Charleston were the first time lawyers had to grapple in a courtroom with the president's assertions. Mr. Trump's executive order was the opening salvo in a broad new attack by his administration against climate lawsuits targeting oil companies. Citing the executive order, the Justice Department this month filed unusual lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan seeking to prevent them from filing their own climate-change suits. (Hawaii filed its suit anyway, and Michigan's attorney general has signaled that she will also be proceeding.) In court hearings in Charleston on Thursday and Friday, Judge Roger M. Young Sr. asked each side to weigh in on the order as they sparred over the companies' motions to dismiss the case, which was filed in 2020. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
E&E News
4 days ago
- Business
- E&E News
Judge in climate case calls Trump EO a ‘piece of evidence'
A South Carolina judge appeared likely to put considerable stock in President Donald Trump's actions to upend climate lawsuits as the court weighs a bid by the oil and gas industry to dismiss a case that would force fossil fuel giants to pay for the costs of global warming. In a hearing Thursday, Circuit Judge Roger Young pointed to Trump's executive order from last month that directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to take 'all appropriate action' to stop roughly two dozen lawsuits by states and cities aimed at making the oil and gas industry pay for damages from storms, flooding and other disasters. It came after the judge took the unusual step in April of asking both sides in the case, filed by the city of Charleston, to give him their opinion on the effects that the executive order could have on the case. 'The president says in his order that these kinds of lawsuits weaken national security,' Young said Thursday during the hearing to consider the industry's motion to dismiss the case. Advertisement The oil and gas industry has argued that the lawsuit raises national security concerns and should be barred under federal law.
