State–Federal Power and Environmental Law

Vermont argued in U.S. District Court in Rutland on Monday that two lawsuits attacking its 2024 “climate superfund” law should be thrown out, defending its authority to make fossil fuel companies help pay for climate‑related damage such as the catastrophic 2023 flooding. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute sued in 2024, and the Trump administration’s Justice Department separately sued Vermont and New York after President Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to target states he says overreach in regulating energy, calling the laws “burdensome and ideologically motivated” and a threat to energy independence and national security. Vermont attorney Jonathan Rose told the court the law is a traditional exercise of state power to raise revenue and protect residents, and does not directly regulate emissions or punish producers, while DOJ lawyer Riley Walters countered that Vermont is improperly trying to subject global energy production to its law and that it is “impossible” to trace specific in‑state harms to particular fossil fuel extraction in places like Texas or Saudi Arabia. West Virginia is leading about two dozen energy‑producing states intervening on the industry’s side, warning Vermont could seek billions from companies in their jurisdictions, while environmental and farm groups including the Conservation Law Foundation and the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont are backing the state. The case is emerging as a potential national test of whether states can impose retroactive climate‑damage liability on oil and gas firms, with business groups portraying the law as an assault on U.S. energy security and environmental advocates casting it as long‑overdue accountability for climate costs already hitting local budgets.