President Donald Trump and the oil industry have sought to smother state-level climate action. But a growing number of state lawmakers, mayors and attorneys general are embracing an aggressive gambit: Going after the fossil fuel industry itself.
State and local governments are seeking to retroactively charge the biggest fossil fuel companies billions of dollars to account for climate-fueled damage to states, such as wildfires and floods. They’re pursuing two tracks: lawsuits modeled on tobacco litigation, and climate superfund legislation based on conventional pollution cleanup.
Trump has specifically targeted those efforts, ordering the Justice Department to challenge them in court. The oil sector also has lobbied Congress to block such policies. And one Republican lawmaker vowed Wednesday to introduce legislation to block the efforts. Nevertheless, the idea is gaining traction in Democratic-governed states — especially as the Trump administration closes off other avenues of climate action, while also threatening the funding states had relied on to adapt to climate impacts.
“With the federal government pulling back so much … we need to figure out how we’re going to pay for this,” said Democratic state Rep. Robyn Gabel, the Illinois House majority leader and sponsor of the state’s new climate superfund bill.
“Illinois has a tendency not to be the first,” she said. “But now that we’re not the first, I’m hoping that we can learn from others.”
Before Trump’s 2024 election, only a single state — Vermont — had passed a climate superfund law, as other left-leaning states focused on the Biden administration’s bid to deploy renewable energy at large scales.
The Republican takeover of Washington changed that. New York passed its own climate superfund law in December 2024. And the following year, lawmakers in at least 10 other states proposed similar bills. This year, the policy is continuing to gain traction — even as legal challenges have mounted.
“The people of Maine can’t foot these bills,” state Rep. Victoria Doudera, the top House Democrat on the state’s Joint Environment and Natural Resources Committee, said last month before that panel advanced a climate superfund bill for the first time.
State and local policymakers are setting their sights on fossil fuel companies as the Trump administration looks to cut federal funding for rebuilding after disasters and preparing for future ones — especially those forecast to worsen due to climate change.
Trump signed a sweeping executive order in April targeting states for their climate superfund laws and lawsuits against the oil industry, calling such state-level climate actions “irreconcilable with my Administration’s objective to unleash American energy.”
But as the Trump administration axes climate funding and regulations — including an anticipated repeal of the endangerment finding, the bedrock of federal climate policy — Democrats say the pressure is only building for state and local policymakers to take matters into their own hands.
“These are nonnegotiable expenses. When a bridge washes away … you can’t say, ‘No more bridge,’” said Justin Flagg, director of environmental policy for New York state Sen. Liz Krueger (D), who sponsored that state’s climate superfund law.
“There’s no question that these costs have to be paid and are already being paid,” he told Oregon lawmakers considering their own climate superfund bill. “The only question is: Who will foot the bill?”
In response to questions, the White House accused Democrats of “using lawfare to stop the President’s popular energy agenda.”
“The American people voted for the President to restore America’s energy dominance, and Americans in blue states should not have to pay the price of the Democrats’ radical climate agenda,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement to POLITICO’s E&E News.
Superfund laws in New York and Vermont are already facing blowback. Industry giant ConocoPhillips noted in a 2025 lobbying disclosure form that it was talking to lawmakers about draft legislation relating to state superfunds. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Legal fights loom
The laws also face a barrage of lawsuits from the Trump administration, the American Petroleum Institute and a coalition of Republican attorneys general.
West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey filed suit less than two months after New York enacted its superfund law, saying it would impose billions of dollars of costs on energy-producing states and companies.
“If we allow New York to get away with this, it will only be a matter of time before other states follow suit — wrecking our nation’s power grid,” McCuskey said.
The lawsuits are still pending in federal courts in New York and Vermont, but Democratic lawmakers have sought to push back.
Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in December filed a friend of the court brief siding with New York in its efforts to defend the superfund law. The red states’ argument, they said, would invert “traditional federalism principles and risk invalidating a host of state laws.”
The attorneys general say various federal laws, including the dormant commerce clause, bar states from passing laws that hinder interstate commerce.
But the Democratic lawmakers say the argument is “so broad that it would flip the constitutional balance of power between states and the federal government on its head.”
As the legal challenges wind through the courts and other states consider their own climate superfund bills, advocates see a chance to broaden the fight to states with different judicial precedents. Both New York and Vermont are within the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“There’s real value in taking advantage of the diversity of states in our federal system,” Geoff Hand, a partner at SRH Law, said during Oregon’s climate superfund hearing. “There may be different paths to success in different states. It’s important to pursue those.”
Oregon’s climate superfund bill on Tuesday cleared its first committee along party lines. State Sen. Jeff Golden, a sponsor of the bill, called the vote “historic.” But some observers are still waiting to see how much momentum climate superfunds might have this year. Earlier this month, a Virginia Senate panel voted down a similar bill.
Most of the proposals seem like “messaging bills that are unlikely to advance beyond the initial committee of referral,” ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm, wrote Wednesday.
But that could change quickly, the firm added.
“We reiterate that efforts toward climate superfunds could gain swift traction if a U.S. District Court affirms the enacted programs in Vermont and/or New York,” the firm wrote. “We also think that pending climate superfund legislation in Maine and New Jersey could advance even before the District Courts rule.”
API, which 2025 lobbying records show has talked to Congress about draft legislation related to state efforts to impose liability on the industry, has called the expanding scope of state cost recovery efforts an “ongoing, coordinated campaign” against the sector and its workers.
“Retroactively penalizing companies for meeting consumer demand for affordable, reliable energy would set a dangerous precedent of state overreach,” said Rolf Hanson, API’s senior vice president for state government relations and public affairs.
Congressional Republican vows opposition
Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.), said Wednesday she is working with House and Senate colleagues to write legislation to “tackle” the superfund laws and the lawsuits, arguing they could “destroy energy affordability for consumers.”
Hageman’s comments came as she thanked Attorney General Pam Bondi for the administration’s “continued efforts against extreme anti-energy policies taken by states and cities.”
Pressed on whether the Department of Justice was “fully committed” to stop the states’ efforts, Bondi said it is, adding, “so is the entire administration. We talk about that a lot.”
The Trump administration also went to court in a bid to prevent Michigan and Hawaii from joining the ranks of cities, counties and states suing the oil and gas industry for compensation for the costs of dealing with climate change.
But a federal judge last month rejected the Department of Justice’s effort to block Michigan from filing a lawsuit — a day after the state became the 11th in the country to file a climate liability lawsuit.
Judge Jane Beckering of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan said the federal government’s claims it would be hurt by the state’s lawsuit were based on a “chain of possibilities” that were “too speculative and attenuated.”
Her decision came a day after Michigan filed a lawsuit, accusing four major oil producers and API of acting as a “cartel” to restrict the development of renewable energy and electric vehicles. Beckering, a Biden appointee, did not mention Michigan’s lawsuit in her ruling.
Hawaii, which in May 2025 became the 10th state to sue the industry, is using the Michigan decision to bolster its own fight against the administration, alerting the federal court in Hawaii that a federal judge in Michigan had dismissed a similar lawsuit.
DOJ said its Environment and Natural Resources Division is “zealously protecting American energy from state overreach.”
In a statement, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson said DOJ’s Michigan lawsuit had its “intended effect” — forcing Michigan to file a lawsuit not in state court, but in federal court where the industry believes climate lawsuits are more likely to be quashed.
The department said Hawaii’s state court claims are stayed as a result of its lawsuit, and it looks “forward to vindicating the supremacy of federal law there as well.”
Many state Republicans have pointed to that fierce — and likely expensive — legal fight as reason enough to forgo climate superfund bills. If states lose those fights, they could be out millions of dollars with nothing to show for it, Maine Republican state Sen. Joseph Martin said during committee debate.
“Picking a fight with people that have lawyers that can hold hands all the way to Wall Street and back might not be the best idea,” he said.
Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.
