In yet another devastating development for the Rockefeller-backed campaign targeting the American energy industry, a federal judge ruled on Monday that the state of New York cannot force energy companies to pay a $75 billion retroactive fee for global greenhouse gas emissions under its so-called Climate Change Superfund Act.

Chief Judge Brenda Sannes of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York granted summary judgment to the coalition of 22 states and business groups challenging the 2024 law in West Virginia v. James, concluding that New York’s sweeping scheme is preempted by federal law and intrudes on the federal government’s authority over foreign affairs.

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the Act in December 2024, months after Vermont enacted the country’s first such law. It imposes strict liability, “without regard to fault,” on companies the state deems responsible for more than one billion tons of emissions from fossil fuel extraction and crude oil refining worldwide between 2000 and 2024.

The ruling delivers a striking blow to the Rockefeller-born effort to move the climate liability campaign from courtrooms into state legislatures after repeated legal setbacks, especially as those cases face an uncertain future at the U.S. Supreme Court’s upcoming term.

New Label, Same Legal Problem

At the center of Judge Sannes’ ruling is the Second Circuit’s 2021 rejection of New York City’s (first) climate lawsuit, yet state legislators in Albany passed a statute doing the same thing anyway.

Judge Sannes saw right through it:

“there is very little daylight left to distinguish the Climate Act from the common-law claims in City of New York.”

New York argued its Climate Change Superfund Act was different because the legislature – rather than a court applying common law – created the liability scheme, and because the Act seeks compensation for past emissions rather than directly ordering companies to reduce future emissions. The court rejected those distinctions:

“It makes no difference that the obligation to pay compensation stems from a past harm, because the activity that is subject to the compensation scheme—domestic greenhouse gas emissions—is ‘potentially subject to the exclusive federal regulatory scheme.’”

…“The Climate Act is not, as New York contends, an ‘exercise of traditional state responsibility,’ … and it therefore is not ‘presumptively competent to address issues that demand a unified federal standard.’”

As EID Climate warned when West Virginia sued, the Act is climate litigation rewritten as legislation, and the sponsors never hid it. Their October 2023 memo used Richard Heede’s activist attribution research to list the 38 companies that New York targeted, and lead sponsor State Sen. Liz Krueger bragged that after courts dismissed climate lawsuits, the legislature had “accepted the invitation.”

The court also noted that the Clean Air Act does not authorize New York’s scheme, and the foreign affairs doctrine independently bars any cost recovery demand against a foreign producer. Judge Sannes concluded that “the Climate Act is ‘simply beyond the limits of state law,’” and that “it is precisely because the Climate Act operates within an area of law ‘in which the federal interest is so dominant’ that it cannot be enforced.”

What It Means for Vermont, the Copycats, and Ongoing Litigation

Vermont should pay attention. Its first-in-the-nation law faces suits from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, API, two dozen intervening states, and the U.S. Justice Department. Judge Mary Kay Lanthier heard arguments in Rutland on March 30 and has yet to rule. DOJ, suing under President Trump’s April 2025 executive order on state energy overreach, urged the court to “end Vermont’s lawless experiment.”

Acting Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson argued that “Like New York, Vermont is usurping the federal government’s exclusive authority over nationwide and global greenhouse gas emissions.” DOJ now has a district court decision saying exactly that.

Statehouses are already heading for the exits: copycat superfund bills failed in eight of the 12 states that took them up in 2026, three more are stalled, and Maine only passed a study.

Some legislatures saw this coming. Massachusetts Rep. Steven Owens, who has sponsored a climate superfund bill multiples times, told Bloomberg Law in December that colleagues were hesitant to get ahead of the active litigation and that the state’s path forward was “to watch what’s happening with New York and Vermont.” Maine and Maryland settled for study bills, and New Jersey’s bill stalled before summer recess as Trenton watched the New York case. The lawmakers who waited now have their answer, and it is the opposite of what they were expecting.

The ground is shifting under the broader campaign as well. In March, Maryland’s highest court tossed three local governments’ climate lawsuits, holding that “no amount of creative pleading” could disguise an effort to use state law to regulate global conduct.

What It Means: New York Decision Looms Over Boulder

The New York law’s international reach, which ultimately proved fatal, closely parallels Boulder’s climate lawsuit now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Like the superfund law, Boulder’s public nuisance case seeks damages attributable to the production and sale of fossil fuels worldwide. Judge Sannes stated “it is with little difficulty” that the Superfund law intruded into the field of foreign affairs, writing it would “sow confusion,” interfere with the political branches, and complicate the federal government’s approach to international climate policy.

Those concerns apply just as directly to Boulder and similar climate suits, since allowing individual cities and states to impose retroactive climate assessments, whether framed as superfund taxes or damages over global emissions, would subject energy producers to the very liability New York deemed an intrusion on federal authority over foreign relations.

Bottom Line: This ruling cements New York’s status as the graveyard for the Rockefeller climate campaign. In 2019, the New York Attorney General lost its climate lawsuit, and was followed by New York City losing two separate climate cases in 2021 and 2025.

Relabeling climate litigation as a “superfund” does not make it constitutional. New York wrote a statute to accomplish what the Second Circuit told New York City it could not do, and the statute met the same end. Every legislature weighing a copycat bill, and every court weighing Vermont’s law, now has a 63-page answer.

The court ordered a status report by September 14 on how the case proceeds. Attorney General Letitia James can appeal, to the same Second Circuit that wrote the precedent that doomed this law.