{"id":391045,"date":"2026-07-29T20:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T20:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/391045\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T20:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T20:26:12","slug":"texas-paxton-leads-gop-ags-supporting-jacksons-chemours-suit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/391045\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas\u2019 Paxton leads GOP AGs supporting Jackson\u2019s Chemours suit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton leads a new coalition of 10 GOP state AGs supporting North Carolina Democrat Jeff Jackson\u2019s lawsuit<\/a> against Chemours and DuPont.<\/p>\n

The case is scheduled for Sept. 15 oral arguments at the North Carolina Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Paxton is his state\u2019s GOP nominee for US Senate in the fall election. President Donald Trump endorsed Paxton in May to unseat incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in Texas\u2019 Republican primary.<\/p>\n

Now Paxton is the lead state AG filing a friend-of-the-court brief<\/a> at North Carolina\u2019s highest court in the Democrat Jackson\u2019s environmental contamination suit against the two chemical companies.<\/p>\n

Chemours and DuPont challenge Jackson\u2019s authority to pursue his suit. The companies argue that Jackson is trying to pursue the same legal arguments that already led to an earlier settlement between the companies and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.<\/p>\n

Paxton and attorney generals from Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Utah filed court documents<\/a> Wednesday supporting Jackson. All 10 AGs in the coalition are Republicans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issues presented in this case relate directly to the longstanding and well-settled sovereign authority of states, through their respective attorneys general, to act in connection with matters involving the public interest, including public resources,\u201d lawyers representing the Republican AGs wrote. \u201cOver thirty attorneys general across the United States have pending lawsuits against the Defendants in connection with impacts to public resources caused by per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (\u2018PFAS\u2019), most of which involve common law claims for damages that may not be available to state regulatory agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSeveral states have reached settlements that benefit the public with hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in relief in connection with PFAS contamination,\u201d the court filing continued. \u201cStates, through their respective attorneys general, must not be precluded from fulfilling their duty to protect citizens against statewide or regional threats to the public like those caused by PFAS contamination.\u201d<\/p>\n

The AGs make four basic arguments about \u201cissues of law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cState attorneys general have inherent common law authority to protect the public interest,\u201d their lawyers wrote. \u201cState attorneys general retain all such common law powers absent explicit legislative action to revoke or limit those common law powers. The existence of state environmental agencies and regulations do not displace common law powers of attorneys general. Common law powers of state attorneys general are vital to address PFAS contamination where impaired public resources and interests impose significate burdens on many states.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jackson defended his lawsuit in a July 22 state Supreme Court brief<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Attorney General brings this lawsuit on behalf of the State to recover damages from Petitioners for the decades they spent knowingly discharging toxic chemicals into the environment, poisoning the State\u2019s natural resources,\u201d wrote state Justice Department lawyers led by Solicitor General Nicholas Brod. \u201cPer- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances \u2014 so-called \u2018PFAS\u2019 or \u2018forever chemicals\u2019 \u2014 from Petitioners\u2019 plant have traveled through the air, seeped into the groundwater, flowed down the Cape Fear River, and spread throughout southeastern North Carolina.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is no ordinary pollution,\u201d the Justice Department brief continued. \u201cPFAS are particularly soluble, moving freely through groundwater while migrating across property lines and geographic boundaries. And they are remarkably resistant to the natural degradation that other chemicals face. Worse, PFAS are linked to cancers, kidney and liver problems, developmental defects, and other serious conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPFAS thus pose a problem that no North Carolinian can solve alone,\u201d Jackson\u2019s lawyers wrote. \u201cPetitioners have contaminated thousands of square miles of land and hundreds of billions of gallons of groundwater, exposing hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians to unsafe levels of PFAS, with no end in sight. PFAS are in the fish that anglers pull from the Cape Fear River, the waterfowl that move between public game lands and private hunting clubs, and the water that irrigates the crops that feed our State.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jackson\u2019s brief criticized the companies for waiting until \u201croughly five years into this litigation\u201d to challenge the attorney general\u2019s standing to sue.<\/p>\n

\u201cPetitioners\u2019 argument rests on the false premise that the State here seeks purely private damages that individual litigants can recover,\u201d Justice Department lawyers wrote. \u201cBut the State is not seeking private damages, like lost profits or diminution in value for private property. Rather, it seeks compensatory damages for harm to the natural resource itself. Private injuries do not erase the State\u2019s independent interest or its corresponding authority to seek damages to vindicate that interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a company damages a state\u2019s natural resources, it is liable to the State for public injuries and to private parties for personal harms, with trial courts policing this line as a matter of remedy,\u201d the brief continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Attorney General also has authority to bring this suit for the State,\u201d Jackson\u2019s lawyers argued. \u201cAt common law, the Attorney General served as the sovereign\u2019s lawyer. The Attorney General retains that common law authority to represent the State today. No statute repeals that authority here, much less with the clarity that derogation from the common law requires.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Attorney General claims no novel authority here,\u201d his lawyers wrote. \u201cHe does not seek to pursue free-floating notions of the public good, step into the shoes of private property owners, or sit as a super-regulator. Rather, the Attorney General is seeking redress for decades of harm to our State\u2019s natural resources. In so doing, he is following well-established common law principles and the text of the statutes that the General Assembly has written.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chemours and DuPont argued in a May Supreme Court filing<\/a> that Jackson has no authority to extract even more money from the companies than an earlier lawsuit settlement requires.<\/p>\n

Jackson\u2019s suit is tied to environmental contamination from Chemours\u2019 Fayetteville Works plant on the Cape Fear River. A state Business Court judge ruled in August 2025 that the attorney general could proceed with his complaint.<\/p>\n

The state Supreme Court granted a stay in the case in October. Justices split, 5-2, in March when agreeing to hear the companies\u2019 appeal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case is about the State of North Carolina\u2019s attempt to use a second lawsuit to extract substantial money damages from Chemours and its predecessor DuPont after Chemours and North Carolina resolved an earlier lawsuit through a binding consent order,\u201d the companies\u2019 lawyers wrote in their brief this spring. \u201cThat consent order required Chemours to, among other things, pay millions of dollars in civil penalties and agree to ongoing remedial efforts to address the release of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as PFAS, from Chemours\u2019s Fayetteville Works plant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese remedial efforts were designed to prevent the future discharge of PFAS into waterways near Fayetteville Works, reduce emission of PFAS into the air, develop monitoring solutions, and pay for water filtration solutions for private individuals who lived nearby,\u201d the court filing continued. \u201cIn agreeing to the consent order, the State represented to Chemours and the trial court that it viewed these measures as \u2018effective and comprehensive\u2019 solutions to the environmental concerns over the release of PFAS from Fayetteville Works.\u201d<\/p>\n

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality pursued the first lawsuit. \u201cBut the day after NCDEQ and Chemours entered into the final substantive addendum to that consent order, the Attorney General filed a second suit on behalf of the State against Chemours seeking extensive and unprecedented money damages,\u201d the companies\u2019 lawyers wrote. \u201cThe allegations in the Attorney General\u2019s suit are largely identical to those in the earlier NCDEQ suit. The damages that the Attorney General seeks are also co-extensive with damages sought by thousands of North Carolina citizens who have also sued Chemours for private harms that they claim were caused by PFAS from Fayetteville Works.\u201d<\/p>\n

The General Assembly, \u201cin the middle of the case,\u201d repealed the state law that the attorney general had used as the basis for his suit, according to the brief. Chemours and DuPont then asked a judge to dismiss the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis prompted the Attorney General to claim \u2014 for the first time in five years of litigating this case \u2014 that he had authority under the common law alone,\u201d the companies argued. \u201cThe trial court agreed and denied Chemours\u2019s and DuPont\u2019s motion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brief points to the \u201ccentral question\u201d in the case: \u201cdoes the Attorney General have the authority to bring this environmental protection lawsuit against Chemours and DuPont? The answer is no, given that the state agency charged by the General Assembly to regulate the environment has already brought (and resolved) such a case, Chemours is already operating under a consent order that requires it to take numerous actions to abate the prior discharge of PFAS from Fayetteville Works, and the General Assembly repealed the statute that previously authorized such a lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPermitting the Attorney General to proceed would remove all incentive for any company to settle with a state regulatory agency if the Attorney General could later sue that same company for money damages for the same alleged harms the agency and the company resolved in the earlier case,\u201d the companies\u2019 lawyers wrote. \u201cAnd the State\u2019s claimed damages in this lawsuit would subject Chemours to duplicative damages awards with the thousands of North Carolinians pursuing private lawsuits against the company.\u201d<\/p>\n

The state Supreme Court granted<\/a> a writ of supersedeas in March that blocked lower court proceedings in the case. In a separate order,<\/a> justices split along party lines in deciding to take up the companies\u2019 request to review a lower court ruling favoring Jackson.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s five-member Republican majority issued no commentary about its decision, though Justice Richard Dietz wrote a solo concurring opinion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are two reasons why I support issuing a writ of certiorari here,\u201d Dietz explained. \u201cThe first is that this case is right on the cusp of an appeal by right. Although there is no existing case law authorizing an immediate appeal here, that is likely because the State has never tried something like this before. There can\u2019t be precedent if the issue is unprecedented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dietz\u2019s second reason is that the \u201centire case meets the criteria\u201d for Supreme Court review. DuPont and Chemours challenge Jackson\u2019s ability to file a lawsuit separate from legal action involving state environmental regulators.<\/p>\n

\u201cWere it not for this concurrence, a reader would walk away thinking the Attorney General is bravely rushing in to stop a chemical company who, in the dissent\u2019s words, \u2018allegedly perpetrated what is perhaps the most widespread contamination from an industrial facility in North Carolina history,\u2019\u201d Dietz wrote. \u201cBut the Attorney General is not leading the charge; he is bringing up the rear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[T]he State of North Carolina has been all over this for years,\u201d Dietz added. \u201cThe State sued Chemours and the two sides fought a lengthy legal battle. Ultimately the trial court entered a consent judgment that included twenty-five pages of mandatory conditions. The court order requires Chemours to accept dozens of new oversight and compliance requirements, help impacted people remediate the contamination, and pay millions and millions of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe core legal issue raised in this petition is whether the ability of state administrative agencies to do what happened here \u2014 sue in defense of the public interest \u2014 limits the ability of the Attorney General to do the same,\u201d Dietz wrote.<\/p>\n

State courts normally rule against \u201cclaim-splitting,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the question here is whether this doctrine applies to everyone, or just to everyone except the State,\u201d Dietz wrote. \u201cDoes this principle mean the State has an obligation to choose which agency or department pursues relief for a particular wrong? Likewise, does the General Assembly, when it creates a vast administrative state with the power to sue, limit the corresponding power of the Attorney General to also sue for the same harms? Or, instead, is the State the one litigant in our court system who truly gets multiple bites at the same apple?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Court has never answered these questions. They are squarely raised by the petition in this case and ripe to be addressed,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Justice Anita Earls wrote for the court\u2019s two dissenting Democrats.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefendants allegedly perpetrated what is perhaps the most widespread contamination from an industrial facility in North Carolina history,\u201d Earls wrote. \u201cAt issue in this petition is defendants\u2019 stunning proposition that the claims against them should be dismissed because the Attorney General lacks authority to hold defendants accountable for their actions and to recover money damages for injured communities. That is, defendants argue that the Attorney General lacks the authority to enforce state law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Labeling the majority\u2019s decision an \u201cextraordinary step,\u201d Earls wrote \u201cthis Court interrupts factfinding proceedings below in the trial court, further delays justice for allegedly injured communities, and wrongly suggests support for defendants\u2019 untenable position that the state\u2019s Attorney General is powerless to enforce the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAllowing this petition at this stage is particularly egregious in light of the substantial public interests at stake in timely adjudicating these claims and the strong precedent that the Attorney General on behalf of \u2018[t]he State is the proper party to complain of wrongs done to its citizens by public nuisance,\u2019\u201d Earls added.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court split, 5-2, last October in granting a temporary stay<\/a> in the case. The stay blocked a scheduled Business Court hearing. Judge Michael Robinson canceled the hearing<\/a> after the high court\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n

Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, filed the suit when he served as North Carolina attorney general. Jackson took over the suit when he succeeded Stein in 2025.<\/p>\n

Robinson ruled<\/a> in August 2025 that Jackson could continue pursuing the suit. DuPont and Chemours appealed<\/a> that ruling to the state Supreme Court the following month. The companies challenged the attorney general\u2019s authority to file his own suit on top of other legal action initiated by state environmental regulators.<\/p>\n

The NC Chamber Legal Institute filed a friend-of-the-court brief in October 2025 supporting the companies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Attorney General brought this action against DuPont and Chemours over releases of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (\u2018PFAS\u2019) from Fayetteville Works, a manufacturing facility,\u201d the companies\u2019 lawyers wrote in their state Supreme Court petition. \u201cHe brings this case not on behalf of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (\u2018NCDEQ\u2019), the regulatory agency that has already sued over PFAS discharges from Fayetteville Works, but on behalf of the State of North Carolina generally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough this lawsuit, the Attorney General acts as a second environmental regulator who answers only to himself, free from the legislative or administrative rulemaking process,\u201d the petition continued. \u201cThe Attorney General seeks to recover substantial money damages based on the supposed need to fund various environmental and related programs, even though Chemours is already funding many similar programs in cooperation with a comprehensive Consent Order it entered into in the litigation brought by NCDEQ concerning PFAS discharges from Fayetteville Works. There is no guarantee that any judgment or settlement in this case would even go towards creating those programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMoreover, lawsuits brought by thousands of parties, including private citizens and governmental bodies, assert the same alleged injuries to much of the same resources and seek much of the same damages that the Attorney General seeks in this case,\u201d the court filing added.<\/p>\n

Robinson\u2019s August 2025 order supported the attorney general\u2019s power to pursue his lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cNorth Carolina, upon independence from Great Britain, inherited the common law of England not repugnant to or inconsistent with its own laws,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cUnder English common law at that time, the Attorney General had the power to \u2018prosecute all actions necessary for the protection and defense of the property and revenue of the Crown.\u2019 The Crown was the sovereign of England; however, in North Carolina, the People are sovereign.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFurther, North Carolina law has established that the Attorney General has the power to \u2018prosecute all actions necessary for the protection and defense of the property and revenue of the sovereign people of North Carolina,\u2019\u201d Robinson added. \u201cAdditionally, North Carolina has a quasi-sovereign interest in its natural resources, and a quasi-sovereign interest is a form of property interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTherefore, the Court concludes that the Attorney General has had, and continues to have, the power to originate and maintain suits for the protection and defense of North Carolina\u2019s natural resources on behalf of the people of North Carolina and the State as a whole,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n

Robinson rejected DuPont and Chemours\u2019 argument that the AG\u2019s office could act only on behalf of state regulators with the Department of Environmental Quality.<\/p>\n

\u201c[T]he Court reads N.C.G.S. \u00a7 113-131(d) as requiring the Attorney General to act as attorney for the NCDEQ when the NCDEQ requests it; however, this does not necessarily bar the Attorney General from representing the State in natural resource cases without the NCDEQ\u2019s explicit request,\u201d Robinson wrote. \u201cGiven the additional fact that NCDEQ lacks statutory authority to seek some of the specific relief sought in this action, it appears to the Court that only the Attorney General has the authority to seek such damages and relief for the State and citizens of North Carolina.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton leads a new coalition of 10 GOP state AGs supporting North Carolina…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[137737,4486,137738,7624,137739,137740,1967,137741,46633,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-391045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-amicus","tag-attorney-general","tag-chemours","tag-dupont","tag-environmental-contamination","tag-jeff-jackson","tag-ken-paxton","tag-n-c-supreme-court","tag-pfas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}