Gov. Kathy Hochul said New York state is \u201clooking\u201d at its \u201coptions of appeal\u201d after a federal judge struck down the state\u2019s Climate Change Superfund Act saying it is preempted by the federal government\u2019s Clean Air Act.<\/p>\n
Hochul signed the Climate Change Superfund Act into law in 2024.<\/p>\n
The judge\u2019s decision means New York cannot impose strict liability on energy companies for their alleged contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n
This is according to the U.S. Department of Justice<\/a>.<\/p>\n Democratic New York state Sen. Liz Krueger initially sponsored the bill in the state Legislature.<\/p>\n Krueger said she was \u201cexpecting it to go this way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe feel very strongly the attorney general needs to appeal this to a higher court, and we believe that we will win,\u201d said Krueger.<\/p>\n The law uses a polluter-pays model requiring major fossil fuel companies to pay $75 billion collectively over 25 years.<\/p>\n \u201cGuess what? If we don\u2019t win, there\u2019s about $75 billion of planned climate resilience funding that we the taxpayers of New York, will have to pay instead of the major fossil fuel polluters who caused this damage,\u201d said Krueger.<\/p>\n Some New York business leaders tell Spectrum News 1 that this law was an overreach on the state\u2019s part, including The Business Council of New York State, which was a plaintiff in this case.<\/p>\n \u201cI think this was an attempt by the state, as they say, \u2018Have their cake and eat it too,\u2019 to impose these assessments and they thought, in a way, it would not impact consumers of fuels,\u201d said Ken Pokalsky, vice president of government affairs at The Business Council of New York State.<\/p>\n \u201cA massive overreach,\u201d said Justin Wilcox, executive director of Upstate United. \u201cAgain, I really feel bad for the attorney general who is asked to defend the indefensible here.\u201d<\/p>\n Environmental advocates share that while this is the decision in this case, there are multiple legal challenges that still have to be decided.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s another case in the Southern District of New York brought by the Trump administration,\u201d said Jon Binder, executive director of the Model Climate Laws Initiative for Environmental Advocates NY. \u201cThis case was in the northern district of New York brought by a bunch of red states and business groups. There\u2019s also a case in Vermont that\u2019s pending. So, we still have to see what happens in those cases. There\u2019s lots of additional legal steps.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration is also reacting to this decision. Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the U.S. Justice Department\u2019s Energy and Natural Resources Division said in part:<\/p>\n \u201cThe Department of Justice is delivering on President Trump\u2019s order to protect American energy from state overreach. New York\u2019s law would have expropriated $75 billion from energy companies around the world during an energy emergency and in direct defiance of American foreign policy and federal law.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump signed an executive order<\/a> in April 2025 in what his administration said is \u201can order to protect American energy from state overreach.\u201d<\/p>\n New York’s legal challenges are closely being watched by some leaders in New Jersey<\/a>. There\u2019s a similar measure that stalled in the New Jersey statehouse last session. In a statement to Spectrum News 1, New Jersey Civil Justice Institute President Elissa Frank said, “A federal judge just saved New Yorkers from paying billions more for energy. Unfortunately, New Jersey is considering a similar policy that will drive up fuel and electricity costs by almost $700 per household each year<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Kathy Hochul said New York state is \u201clooking\u201d at its \u201coptions of appeal\u201d after a federal judge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[109,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,5304,112,108,87,200],"class_list":["post-335353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-nicole-neuman","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-politics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}