The Trump administration is reshaping climate litigation, fueling both a rise in lawsuits from the federal government targeting climate policies and an unprecedented wave of legal challenges from outside groups defending them, new research finds.
Around 12 percent of new climate lawsuits filed last year could be considered anti-climate — or non-climate-aligned — litigation, according to the latest annual report from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
That pattern “is clearest and best documented in the U.S.,” the report says, noting the Trump administration’s lawsuits targeting laws in New York and Vermont that would require oil majors to pay for climate damages, as well as litigation that sought to prevent Hawaii and Michigan from bringing polluter-pays cases against fossil fuel producers.
The administration has also challenged state and local climate action, including fights against local building electrification laws, the report says.
