Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Harriet Hageman have introduced legislation aimed at shutting down a growing wave of state and local lawsuits that seek to force oil companies to pay billions of dollars for alleged climate-related damages, a campaign the Republican lawmakers call a coordinated shakedown against American energy producers.
The bill, titled the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act, would prohibit state litigation and laws that target oil companies over climate-related penalties. Cruz, the Texas Republican, and Hageman, who represents Wyoming, authored the measure last month. It arrives as more than two dozen Democratic-led states and cities, collectively home to roughly a quarter of the nation's population, have accused dozens of oil companies of misleading consumers about the climate impact of burning fossil fuels, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The stakes are not abstract. New York has already passed a law under which oil companies will be forced to pay the state $75 billion over the next 25 years. Vermont has enacted a similar statute. A dozen states in total have introduced bills requiring oil companies to pay state coffers to fund environmental resilience and infrastructure repair projects. And the ongoing lawsuits argue oil companies owe hundreds of millions of dollars in damages caused by extreme weather.
The litigation wave stretches back to 2018. Since then, states including California, Delaware, Hawaii, Minnesota, and New Jersey, along with cities including Chicago, Honolulu, San Francisco, and New York, have filed lawsuits against oil companies. The Honolulu suit is reportedly among the farthest along and approaching a potential trial.
A single San Francisco-based law firm, Sher Edling, represents the majority of the cities and states involved. The Center for Climate Integrity, an activist group, has supported the lawsuits and organized a campaign with other groups to oppose Cruz and Hageman's legislation.
Cruz, who has been positioning himself as a leading voice in national Republican politics, framed the effort in blunt terms:
"Through a coordinated campaign by radical environmental groups, our judicial system has been weaponized against American energy producers, including many in Texas. Through meritless lawsuits, they're seeking to bankrupt our energy industry, kill good-paying jobs, and drive up the cost of electricity and gasoline for hardworking families."
Cruz said the legislation "will stop that abuse and protect American jobs, lower energy costs, and strengthen American energy dominance."
Hageman, the Wyoming Republican, took aim at the small number of officials driving the legal strategy. She called the broader litigation campaign "just a really bad idea" and warned about its downstream consequences for ordinary Americans.
"We need energy to power our economy. But you have a very small number of people who are in leadership roles making the decisions to do this that have the ability to destroy the energy climate for everybody and make all of us poor."
She went further, spelling out what she sees as the real-world cost:
"It will increase the cost of food, transportation, housing, if they succeed, it will increase the cost of everything that we need for a modern society."
That argument cuts to the core of the conservative case. Whatever one thinks of climate policy, these lawsuits and state mandates do not reduce emissions. They redirect money, from energy companies, and ultimately from consumers, into state treasuries and the coffers of plaintiffs' lawyers. The people who pay higher prices at the pump and at the grocery store are not the ones filing the suits.
The legal landscape has not been entirely favorable to the states pursuing these cases. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court of Maryland tossed lawsuits brought by the City of Baltimore, Anne Arundel County, and the City of Annapolis against more than a dozen oil companies. The court's majority opinion was pointed, stating that the effort to use state courts to reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions "is so far afield from any area of traditional state or local responsibility that it cannot be seriously contemplated."
That language matters. It suggests at least some courts recognize that city and county governments are reaching well beyond their traditional authority when they try to hold individual companies liable for global atmospheric conditions.
The fight is far from over, though. The U.S. Supreme Court is slated to hear another case, filed by the City of Boulder, Colorado, in the coming months. That ruling could shape the legal terrain for every pending climate suit in the country. Congressional action on major policy questions often moves in tandem with high court decisions, and the timing of the Cruz-Hageman bill is no accident.
Environmental groups have criticized the bill, arguing it provides "immunity" to oil companies. John Shu, a constitutional law scholar who worked in both Bush administrations, pushed back on that characterization.
"The bill doesn't shield American energy producers if they engage in intentional wrongdoing. In that case, they can still be sued for their wrongful behavior, assuming the plaintiffs have actual and sufficient evidence of the alleged wrongdoing."
Shu also addressed the constitutional basis for federal preemption of state climate lawsuits. He argued that the structure of the Constitution gives the federal government, not individual states, the power to regulate interstate, national, and international issues, which include greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
"Besides, it wouldn't be right for one state to determine or regulate the policy of another state."
That point deserves attention. When New York passes a law demanding $75 billion from oil companies, the cost does not stay inside New York's borders. Energy is a national commodity. Price increases flow through every supply chain in the country. A patchwork of state-level climate penalties, each designed by local politicians and trial lawyers, amounts to a backdoor national energy tax, imposed without a vote in Congress.
Cruz has demonstrated considerable influence within the GOP, including shaping Republican primary outcomes in Texas. Whether he can marshal enough support to move the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act through both chambers remains an open question, especially given the narrow margins that have defined recent congressional battles.
What makes this litigation campaign especially worth scrutinizing is its structure. Progressive state attorneys general and city officials have not persuaded Congress to pass a carbon tax or a national emissions mandate. They have not won those arguments in the democratic process at the federal level. So they turned to state courtrooms instead, filing tort claims that repackage a policy agenda as a damages claim.
The strategy is not new. It mirrors the playbook used against tobacco companies decades ago. But there is a key difference: tobacco is a consumer product with a direct causal link to individual illness. Climate change involves global atmospheric systems, centuries of industrial activity across every nation on earth, and chains of causation so diffuse that even the Maryland Supreme Court found the theory unworkable as a matter of state law.
The fact that a single outside law firm, Sher Edling, represents the majority of the plaintiffs tells its own story about how coordinated this effort is. Add the Center for Climate Integrity's campaign to oppose the Cruz-Hageman bill, and the picture is clear: this is an organized, well-funded movement to use litigation as a substitute for legislation.
Republican lawmakers in Congress have shown they can fracture on big votes, as recent state-level GOP disputes have illustrated. But the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act offers a straightforward test of whether the party can unite behind a principle most of its voters already hold: that energy policy should be set by elected representatives in Congress, not by trial lawyers in friendly state courts.
A dozen states have already introduced their own versions of the New York and Vermont laws. If the trend continues without a federal response, the American energy sector will face a rolling series of billion-dollar mandates, each imposed by a different jurisdiction, each with its own formula for extracting payment. The companies will pass those costs along. They always do.
And the people who fill their tanks, heat their homes, and buy their groceries will be the ones who pay, not the politicians who filed the suits, and not the lawyers who brokered the fees.
If progressives want a national climate policy, they should make their case to Congress and win the vote. Using courtrooms to impose what they cannot pass through legislatures is not accountability. It is an end-run around self-government.
