Trump Justice Department Sues Minnesota Seeking To Stop Climate Fraud Case Against Big Oil From Advancing

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice is going after another state that has taken legal action against the oil and gas industry over alleged climate deception, seeking to quash the litigation and shield the industry from any prospect of liability.

On Monday, May 4 the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Minnesota in an attempt to prevent the state’s climate fraud lawsuit against Big Oil from moving forward. The DOJ’s suit, filed in federal district court in Minnesota, claims that by targeting major oil entities, Minnesota is trying to “override” federal energy policy with a state lawsuit that the department says threatens President Trump’s energy dominance agenda. Trump’s DOJ made essentially the same argument last year when it sued New York and Vermont challenging their polluter pays climate superfund laws as well as Michigan and Hawaii aiming to preemptively block their anticipated climate suits against oil companies. The suits against New York and Vermont are still pending, but the cases against Michigan and Hawaii have been dismissed by federal courts because the challenges were brought prematurely before either state had sued the industry.

Both states have since filed cases against big oil companies. Hawaii brought a claim seeking damages for alleged climate deception the day after the DOJ sued the state, and Michigan filed an antitrust claim earlier this year. Both cases are currently moving ahead.

Minnesota’s case against Big Oil, filed in 2020, is also advancing and is even further along procedurally. It accuses ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and Koch Industries and one of its subsidiaries of deliberately spreading false information about climate change in order to inflate profits from unchecked oil and gas sales, in violation of the state’s consumer protection laws. The suit also includes state common law claims of fraud and misrepresentation and failure to warn. Minnesota is seeking relief in the form of disgorgement of profits and orders for defendants to stop their deceptive conduct and to fund a “corrective education campaign” on the issue of climate change.

The case had been bogged down for several years in procedural wrangling over the question of whether it should be in federal or state court. After defendants were unsuccessful in their attempts to boot it into federal court, they tried to get it dismissed in state court. But those efforts failed too. Earlier this year the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s denial of defendants’ motions to dismiss, and last month the state supreme court declined to review that decision – clearing the way for the case to proceed to pre-trial discovery.

“The courts are doing their job, and their decisions in this climate deception lawsuit are clear: Minnesotans have a case to be made, and we deserve our day in court,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in an April 17 statement after the Minnesota Supreme Court denied Big Oil’s petition for review. “Onward to discovery and trial.”

Now the Trump administration is intervening to try to shut the entire case down before it goes any further.

The DOJ’s complaint, filed against Minnesota and Attorney General Ellison, argues that the state’s lawsuit is an unconstitutional attempt to regulate global greenhouse gas emissions and usurp federal authority. It contends that the state action is precluded under the Constitution and is preempted by the Clean Air Act that authorizes EPA to regulate interstate air pollution.

The complaint points to a newly enacted law in Iowa that shields polluters from liability over greenhouse gas emissions and climate change to argue that Minnesota’s lawsuit has prompted a “conflict among the states.” It also cites to several of Trump’s executive orders designed to boost fossil fuels, including one titled “Protecting American Energy from State Overreach” that directed the US Attorney General to take action to stop state climate laws and lawsuits targeting the fossil fuel industry.

“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 press release.

The DOJ’s complaint claims that Minnesota’s case “raises energy costs for consumers nationwide and disrupts the uniform regulation of global greenhouse gases.” But no liability and associated costs have been imposed on energy producers as a result of the state’s case, which has not even gone to trial yet. And this assertion comes as consumers are already burdened with high energy costs that have risen in large part because of the Trump administration’s own policies and actions, such as stymying the buildout of clean energy supply and starting a war with Iran that has spurred the largest disruption to global oil markets in history.

The administration has also been dismantling greenhouse gas regulations across the board. Yet it still claims that the federal government has exclusive authority to regulate these emissions – an argument that attempts to undermine state climate laws and actions, as one climate law expert explained.

“The Trump Administration isn't just rolling back federal climate regulation — it's trying to defang the power of states to do anything about climate either. This filing is its latest effort in that vein,” said Cara Horowitz, executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law School.

“The new lawsuit claims that states can't do anything to regulate greenhouse gas emissions because ‘federal law, not state law, exclusively governs regulation of global greenhouse gas emissions,’” Horowitz noted. She said that this “extraordinarily broad view” would be “a surprise to the many states that have greenhouse gas emission rules on the books.”

Horowitz and other legal experts say the DOJ’s argument is also meritless because it completely mischaracterizes what Minnesota’s lawsuit is about.

“Minnesota's lawsuit doesn't actually relate to defendants' emissions of greenhouse gases. It seeks compensation for alleged fraud and consumer deception, relying on ordinary state law claims designed to protect consumers from fraud,” Horowitz said.

Pat Parenteau, emeritus professor of law at Vermont Law and Graduate School, told Climate in the Courts that the DOJ’s argument is “frivolous” and “should be promptly dismissed.”

“Minnesota’s case is about lying to the public. It has nothing to do with energy policy or regulation of emissions,” Parenteau said.

“And the argument that Minnesota is interfering with the administration’s ‘exclusive authority’ to regulate greenhouse gas emissions is laughable given EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding based on its determination that it has no such authority,” he added. “But it would make a good SNL skit.”

Many of the arguments made by the Trump DOJ in its complaint were also raised by the oil industry defendants in Minnesota’s case, and federal courts rejected them.

In 2021 the US District Court for the District of Minnesota – the same court where DOJ filed its complaint – denied the defendants’ claims that Minnesota’s case necessarily arises under federal law, and in doing so allowed it to move back to state court where it was originally filed. In its ruling the court said that the defendants’ claim that the state seeks to usurp the authority of the federal government is far-fetched and “gravely overstates the State’s case,” which falls squarely within the state’s consumer protection interest. Defendants’ presentation of the state’s case, the court said, amounts to a “caricature.”  

Ellison said he would not be deterred by the Trump administration’s lawsuit.

“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. 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. This frivolous and meritless lawsuit is just their latest attempt to hide from accountability, and I will move to have it dismissed immediately.”

“The American people deserve a Department of Justice that fights for us,” Ellison added. “And it’s a tremendous shame that Trump’s DOJ would rather sell us out to Big Oil.”