On Monday, Gov. Josh Green van Hawaii that his state was planning to sue fossil fuel companies because of their role in climate change to make them pay for damage due to his effects, such as the 2023 forest fires that Maui destroyed.
“I think this might be news,” he said during a Interview on local television. “We will submit a lot.”
On Wednesday, the Trump administration Hawaii chargedTry to block the lawsuit before it could even be submitted.
The Ministry of Justice has also submitted an almost identical lawsuit against MichiganWhere Attorney General Dana Nessel has retained three private law firms to pursue a lawsuit, but has not yet charged. The most important flow of the administration’s argument is that the federal government must determine the national energy policy, not individual states.
Legal experts said it was very unusual to sue to block other lawsuits that still have to be tightened.
Nine states by democratic states have already sued fossil fuel companies for climate change, together with dozens of municipalities throughout the country, Including Honolulu and Maui. The Oil industry and its allies have tried to have them throw away those things by encouraging similar arguments as those who were set up in the Ministry of Justice this week.
The lawsuits that were brought in this week in Hawaii and Michigan mentioned President Trump’s executive order of 8 April, “the protection of American energy against over -range of the State”, in which it was argued that the state policy that hinders the energy industry and increases the costs for Americans. It also said that the other lawsuits that have already been filed by states about climate change can lead to a “paralyzing” damage for oil companies that are being charged.
Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, said that it was “at least very unusual” to try to block the lawsuits preventively. “The usual procedure would be to go into existing lawsuits,” he said. “I have never heard of a situation in which a lawsuit is filed to ask for an order against someone else who submits a lawsuit.”
He predicted that such a legal strategy would not do well. “Procedural is crazy,” he said.
Both suits, submitted in federal courts in Hawaii and Michigan, called the state, the governor and attorney general. Anne Lopez, the attorney general of Hawaii, called the court case of the Ministry of Justice a “direct attack on Hawaii’s rights as a sovereign state.”
At the end of Thursday, Hawaii said that it would have continued His lawsuit in court Against energy companies and the American Petroleum Institute, an industrial group, claiming that the defendants have had misleading behavior on climate change for decades. The lawsuit pointed to the devastating 2023 Maui forest fires, floods and Stranderosie as proof that the prize is borne by the inhabitants of Hawaii.
“The climate crisis is here and the costs of survival that it rises every day,” said Mr. Green. “Hawaii taxpayers should not pay that bill.”
In Michigan, Mrs. Nessel called the lawsuit against her state “at his best frivolous and demonstrably punitive.” She said that Mr. Trump “made it clear that he would answer every Bech and Elke Beck and call his great oil campaign donors and called the lawsuits” perhaps the most surprising debasement of both the White House and Doj. “
Ryan Meyers, senior vice -president and general counsel for the American Petroleum Institute, said that the state affairs were “not only an attack on the companies that offer Americans affordable and reliable energy, but also an unconstitutional insult to the role of the federal government in determining national energy and climate policy.” He thanked the Ministry of Justice for “daring action when taking these assisted state transfer.”
The legal and political fights quickly escalate around the approximately three dozen cases established by national and local authorities against energy companies for climate change.
In January the Supreme Court denied A request from the defendants in HonoluluIncluding Sunoco, Exxon Mobil and Chevron, to revise a Hawaii Supreme Court decision with which the case can continue. In March the judges refused to assess An action taken by Republican States Against Democratic states that oil companies had sued.
Those efforts could have brought down the entire series of things, which supporters call “climate deception” cases because many concentrate on the argument that oil companies have hidden their knowledge about climate risks. Their opponents claim that they are an illegal attempt to dictate energy policy at the expense of the consumer.
Separately on Thursday, the Ministry of Justice New York complained to And Vermont In federal courts in those states about new “climate superfund” laws that want to earn back the costs for damage caused by storms and floods.
In a press release, Attorney General Pamela Bondi said: “These difficult and ideologically motivated laws and lawsuits threaten American energy independence and the economic and national security of our country.”
The New York law brought the amount searched to $ 75 billion. Vermont’s law has established a long -term process to determine the amounts it would pursue.
In its lawsuits against New York and Vermont, the Ministry of Justice is looking for a statement that the laws of the two states are unconstitutional and block their enforcement. The two measures were already confronted with legal challenges of states led by the Republicans and industrial groups. On Thursday another lawsuit, led by West Virginia, was submitted against the law of Vermont.
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