A federal judge in Texas has ruled that ExxonMobil can bring a defamation lawsuit against California\u2019s attorney general over comments about the company\u2019s plastic recycling efforts.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Michael J. Truncale in the Eastern District of Texas said in a ruling earlier this month that California Attorney General Rob Bonta cannot claim official immunity in regards to several statements he made, including one in a campaign email sent to Texas residents.<\/p>\n
Related: California Seeks Injunction to Stop Amazon\u2019s Alleged Stifling of Price Competition<\/a><\/p>\n Bonta sued Exxon in September 2024, saying that the oil giant encouraged consumers to purchase plastics products with the promise that the products would be recycled. He said less than 5% of plastic is recycled into another plastic product, and that recycling processes touted by Exxon don\u2019t work. Exxon said the problem is with California\u2019s recycling system.<\/p>\n Exxon later sued Bonta in his individual capacity and environmental groups for defamation, saying that the comments harmed current and future business contracts. The lawsuit was filed in Texas, near its principal place of business.<\/p>\n Truncale dismissed the lawsuit against the environmental groups but allowed it to proceed against Bonta.<\/p>\n The judge pointed to a campaign email Bonta sent to Texas residents saying that only 5% is recycled and the rest ends up in the environment and in our bodies: \u201cExxon Mobil knew, and Exxon Mobil lied.\u201d Bonta, a Democrat, argued he was simply updating email recipients on his office\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n But Truncale said a campaign contribution link on the email turned the communication into a campaign activity not protected by immunity in Bonta\u2019s official capacity as attorney general.<\/p>\n \u201cHere, the contribution request betrays the email\u2019s true nature: a campaign promotion. Campaigning is not within Bonta\u2019s scope of employment,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n Bonta has filed a notice of appeal.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Attorney General looks forward to vigorously litigating this case, and is proud to advance his lawsuit against ExxonMobil,\u201d his press office said.<\/p>\n ExxonMobil said in a statement that the \u201ccampaign of lies designed to derail our advanced recycling business must stop.\u201d<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/p>\n \n Topics Interested in Lawsuits?<\/p>\n Get automatic alerts for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge in Texas has ruled that ExxonMobil can bring a defamation lawsuit against California\u2019s attorney general…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,27178,460,18308,1846],"class_list":["post-200392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-defamation","tag-environmental","tag-exxonmobil","tag-lawsuit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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