\n<\/p>\n
A federal judge has struck down a landmark New York law that forces major polluters to pay climate damages.<\/p>\n
In her Monday ruling, Brenda Sannes, chief judge of the US district court for the northern district of New York, sided with Republican-led states and oil interests in saying the state cannot enforce its \u201cclimate superfund\u201d law, signed by Kathy Hochul, the governor, in December 2024. The policy required big oil companies to pay $75bn over 25 years for projects to help New York pay for climate mitigation and adaptation.<\/p>\n
Sannes\u2019 63-page decision said the law was \u201cunusual and sweeping\u201d. It relied on the second circuit\u2019s 2021 decision in City of New York v Chevron, <\/em>a case in which New York sued oil companies arguing they should pay climate damages.<\/p>\n \u201cThis decision rests on contested precedent from a fundamentally different case, and Attorney General Tish James must appeal immediately,\u201d said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for Make Polluters Pay, which supports climate superfund policies.<\/p>\n Donald Trump\u2019s justice department argued in support of the lawsuit against the New York policy at a hearing last month. It has also filed its own litigation against it in the southern district of New York; that suit is still pending.<\/p>\n Republicans praised Sannes\u2019 decision.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a major victory in the fight against liberal states, trying to balance their budgets on the backs of our hard-working men and women in the coal, oil and gas industries,\u201d said JB McCuskey, attorney general of West Virginia, whose office led the challenge against the New York law.<\/p>\n Hochul has not yet confirmed if they will appeal the decision. The office is reviewing the decision to \u201cdetermine possible next steps\u201d, said Ken Lovett, senior communications adviser on energy and environment for Hochul.<\/p>\n Vermont, the only other state to have passed a climate superfund law, is facing a parallel legal challenge. Similar bills proposed in other states have not been passed into law.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fossil fuel industry would like nothing more than for one district court ruling in New York to scare lawmakers across the country into backing down, but this decision doesn\u2019t bind other states or stop them from passing their own laws,\u201d said DiPaola. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIf allowed to stand, some of the richest corporations in history get to walk away from $75bn they owe New Yorkers. The floods will still come, roads will still wash out and communities will still need billions to protect themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A federal judge has struck down a landmark New York law that forces major polluters to pay climate damages. In her Monday ruling, Brenda Sannes, chief judge of the US district court for the northern district of New York, sided with Republican-led states and oil interests in saying the state cannot enforce its \u201cclimate superfund\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[186,7208,872,2017,675,175,1040,18158,85,476],"class_list":{"0":"post-52057","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-climate","9":"tag-damages","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-forced","12":"tag-judge","13":"tag-law","14":"tag-pay","15":"tag-polluters","16":"tag-strikes","17":"tag-york"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}