DOJ Sues Minnesota To Block Climate Lawsuit Targeting Energy Companies

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is suing Minnesota over the state’s own climate lawsuit against major energy companies.

The complaint, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, accuses state officials of trying to impose their own climate policies on domestic energy producers in a way the DOJ says burdens national energy development and intrudes on federal authority.

The underlying lawsuit was filed in 2020 by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison against Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute, Koch Industries, and Koch subsidiary Flint Hills Resources. Minnesota brought the case under state consumer-protection laws, alleging that the companies engaged in fraud and deceptive business practices by misleading the public about “climate change and the role of fossil-fuel products in climate change.”

That lawsuit remains pending after years of procedural fights over whether it belongs in state or federal court. Minnesota succeeded in keeping the case in state court in 2024, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower-court ruling allowing the lawsuit to proceed there.

In its new complaint, the DOJ argues that authority over national energy policy and major questions involving greenhouse gas emissions rests with the federal government, not individual states. The department is asking the court to block Minnesota from pursuing the 2020 lawsuit and prevent the state from bringing similar litigation in the future.

“Climate change lawsuits, like Minnesota’s, artfully plead around federal law while transparently seeking to change national energy policy related to global greenhouse gas emissions and to regulate conduct beyond local borders,” the complaint states.

The federal government’s move to counter climate litigation with its own lawsuit follows an executive order issued last year by President Donald Trump, who directed the DOJ to “take all appropriate action to stop” state lawsuits seeking to “dictate national energy policy.”

“President Trump promised to unleash American energy dominance, and Minnesota officials cannot undermine his directive by mandating that their woke climate preferences become the uniform policy of our Nation,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement.

Ellison, who is named as a defendant in the DOJ lawsuit, pledged to seek dismissal of what his office called a “frivolous and meritless” case.

“In 2020, I sued Big Oil for lying to Minnesotans about the true causes of climate change, then sticking us with the bill for the harms it is causing,” Ellison said in a statement. “Six years later, we are still waiting to go to trial because Big Oil has pulled every procedural trick in the book to delay facing the consequences of their unlawful actions.”

Minnesota is among a number of states and local governments that have turned to consumer-protection, public-nuisance, and similar laws to sue major oil and gas companies over the climate impact of their products. Those lawsuits generally accuse the companies of misleading the public about climate risks while seeking to hold them financially responsible for infrastructure costs, natural disaster- or health care-related costs, and other damages.

The DOJ has taken aim at several such efforts. Last year, it filed preemptive lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan, though both were dismissed by federal judges. Separate DOJ challenges to New York and Vermont’s laws, which seek to impose penalties tied to past greenhouse gas emissions to fund disaster relief and climate-related projects, remain pending.

Allowing individual states to use courts to advance climate goals, the Trump administration argued, would create a patchwork of conflicting regulations and interfere with the executive branch’s authority over national energy security and interstate commerce.

“When states target or discriminate against out-of-state energy producers by imposing significant barriers to interstate and international trade, American energy suffers,” Trump’s executive order stated.