Trump Shields Big Oil from Climate Lawsuits as Communities Demand Justice

As climate lawsuits reach critical mass and states pass 'Make Polluters Pay' laws, the fossil fuel industry is fighting to evade accountability, just like they did with their climate lies.

Extreme weather events that once seemed extraordinary have become our new annual reality as the climate crisis accelerates. Climate change shows its face through increasingly frequent and devastating disasters—floods, heat waves, hurricanes, and wildfires that grow more destructive each year. While we pay the price in damage and heartbreak, oil and gas CEOs continue raking in billions from the pollution fueling this crisis.

What is our government doing about it? They're helping Big Oil get away with it.

On April 8th, 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order instructing the Department of Justice to actively block climate lawsuits against fossil fuel companies and override state laws designed to make polluters pay for climate damages. Trump called these accountability measures "extortion" and "ideologically motivated climate change policies."

Trump after signing executive order targeting climate accountability laws, April 2025.

This executive order is the fossil fuel industry's latest attempt to escape consequences for their decades of climate deception. While their own scientists accurately predicted global warming starting in the 1970s, these companies spent millions convincing the public that climate science was uncertain and unreliable. Now that communities are successfully using courts to demand accountability, the industry wants blanket legal immunity.

Communities from Puerto Rico to Hawaii are fighting back through lawsuits seeking billions in damages for climate harms that fossil fuel companies knew their products would cause. Big Oil is terrified because they understand that once one major climate lawsuit succeeds, the floodgates will open. Trump's executive order aims to shut those floodgates before justice has the chance to flow.

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Decades of Climate Deception Finally Exposed

For decades, the fossil fuel industry ran a disinformation campaign to stall action on climate change. ExxonMobil's own scientists created climate models that were remarkably accurate. A 2023 Harvard study found that between 1977 and 2003, Exxon projected that fossil fuel emissions would lead to 0.20 degrees Celsius of global warming per decade, a prediction that has proven largely correct. Their internal forecasts had an average "skill score" of 72 percent, often outperforming NASA and academic scientists.

While Exxon scientists were quietly modeling climate catastrophe with "shocking skill and accuracy," though, they were simultaneously spending millions to convince Americans that climate science was unproven and unreliable. Their advertisements appeared weekly in the New York Times with headlines like "Lies They Tell Our Children" and "Apocalypse No." A 1991 memo by an industry front group made the strategy explicit: "Reposition global warming as theory (not fact)."

ExxonMobil's internal research predicting climate damage privately vs. their advertising denying it publicly.

Internal Exxon strategy memos instructed the company to "extend the science" and "emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions" about climate change. The goal was creating doubt where none existed, buying the industry decades of delay while communities bore the escalating costs of climate damages.

The delay tactics worked exactly as intended. Every year of stalled climate action meant more fossil fuels burned, more greenhouse gases released and accelerated global warming. This has fueled more frequent and destructive extreme weather, with the heaviest toll falling on concentrated in the communities least equipped to handle it. Black, Indigenous, and low-income neighborhoods that had already been systematically excluded from power and resources continue to face the heaviest burden of climate impacts.

Major Climate Lawsuits Seek Billions in Damages

By 2018, states, cities, and tribes began filing lawsuits holding fossil fuel companies accountable for both their climate deception and the damages their products have caused. Today, over 30 major climate lawsuits are working their way through state courts, representing some of the most significant corporate accountability litigation in American history.

Thirty-seven Puerto Rico municipalities are charging major fossil fuel companies with violating the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, the same law used to prosecute organized crime. They argue that Big Oil’s systematic climate lies directly fueled the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017, which killed nearly 3,000 people and caused over $90 billion in damages.

Hurricane Maria destruction in Puerto Rico, 2017.

The Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe in Washington State is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars to relocate their entire community to higher ground as rising seas and increasing floods threaten their ancestral homeland. Their lawsuit argues that fossil fuel companies knew exactly what their products would do to coastal communities and proceeded anyway.

Maui County is suing more than a dozen fossil fuel companies for deceiving the public about climate damages, a case made all the more urgent by the 2023 Lahaina wildfires that killed 102 people and destroyed over 2,000 buildings. Scientists have linked the increasingly dry conditions that fuel such extreme wildfires directly to climate change that fossil fuel companies accurately predicted but publicly denied.

States are also passing climate superfund laws modeled after the 1980 Superfund law that made chemical companies pay to clean up toxic waste sites. New York and Vermont have already enacted laws requiring fossil fuel companies to pay into state funds for climate damages, with more states following suit.

The Push for Corporate Immunity

As climate lawsuits gained momentum and superfund laws spread, the fossil fuel industry started lobbying their friends in the Trump administration for legal immunity. The strategy mirrors the gun industry's successful lobbying for the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) in 2005, which shields gun manufacturers and dealers from most lawsuits related to crimes committed with their products.

Since the PLCAA passed, almost no gun manufacturer accused of negligence has gone to trial. Families who lose children in school shootings find themselves with virtually no legal path to hold the gun industry accountable. The fossil fuel industry wants the same sweeping protection from accountability, and Trump's executive order is their opening move.

Lahaina wildfire aftermath, Maui 2023.

Trump’s April executive order instructs the Attorney General to identify and challenge any state laws that burden fossil fuel development, with special focus on climate policies, carbon taxes, and environmental justice initiatives. It specifically targets state superfund laws as "extortion" and directs federal lawyers to actively fight climate lawsuits in court.

But Trump’s executive order isn’t the only attack on climate justice. This July, House Republicans introduced a provision within the appropriations bill that would block Washington, D.C. from using any funds to pursue its consumer protection lawsuit against Exxon, BP, Chevron, and Shell.

That case, which recently survived Big Oil’s motion to dismiss, is based on the claim that these companies misled the public about the climate impacts of fossil fuels. It’s one of dozens of similar lawsuits across the country.

Now, fossil fuel allies in Congress are trying out a new way to kill these cases by defunding them.

This represents a fundamental attack on federalism and state sovereignty. When tobacco companies were finally held accountable in the 1990s through state lawsuits, the federal government didn't step in to shield Big Tobacco from consequences. When opioid manufacturers faced accountability litigation, the federal government didn't grant them immunity. But fossil fuel companies are now attempting to weaponize federal power as their shield from justice—and we cannot let them succeed.

Climate Justice and Corporate Accountability

Crucially, climate disasters don't affect everyone equally. Hurricane Harvey's worst flooding hit predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods in Houston. Louisiana's "Cancer Alley" communities, already poisoned by petrochemical plants, face some of the highest climate risks in the nation. Heat waves kill more people in redlined neighborhoods that lack tree cover and green space.

Hurricane Harvey flooding in Houston neighborhoods.

This pattern results from decades of discriminatory policies that concentrated environmental hazards in communities of color while ensuring wealthy white neighborhoods had access to resources and political power. The same companies that built their empires on racial hierarchy are now fighting to avoid paying for the damage their products cause to the same communities they've exploited and profited off of for over a century.

If the fossil fuel industry succeeds in achieving immunity, it would rob frontline communities of one of their last avenues for justice. The courts have historically been where the powerless turn to when other institutions fail them, from civil rights lawsuits that challenged segregation to environmental justice cases that forced polluters to clean up toxic sites.

Legal immunity would mean that even if fossil fuel companies are proven to have lied about climate science and knowingly sold products that would cause catastrophic damage, and even if communities can prove direct harm from climate change, they would still have no legal recourse.

Taxpayers are already footing the bill for climate disasters while fossil fuel companies pocket the profits. If Big Oil secures immunity, what industry will be next? Are we prepared to open the floodgates for every negligent corporation that harms our communities to walk away without consequences?

Making polluters pay is fundamentally about who bears responsibility and who gets left behind. When states and communities use courts and legislation to force fossil fuel companies to contribute to climate adaptation, they're demanding that those who profited from an unjust system help repair the damage.

The fossil fuel industry's desperate fight for immunity reveals their greatest fear: being held accountable for decades of lies that prevented action while communities suffered.

The outcome of this fight will determine whether corporate power or democratic accountability wins in the climate crisis. The fossil fuel industry spent decades perfecting the art of avoiding responsibility. Now communities are fighting to make sure that era finally ends, and you can too.

Follow Fossil Free Memo on Substack.
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We can’t let Big Oil escape accountability. Not now. Not ever.

References

1. American Bar Association. "Climate Disaster Resiliency and Recovery Policies Cause Those with the Least to Suffer the Most." Human Rights Magazine, October 30, 2024.

2. Bayou City Waterkeeper. "Flooding Disproportionately Impacts People of Color." September 18, 2020.

3. Center for Climate Integrity. "Big Oil Accountability Lawsuits." Last updated June 4, 2025.

4. Environmental Protection Agency. "Superfund: CERCLA Overview." Last updated October 8, 2024.

5. Everytown for Gun Safety. "Repeal Gun Industry Immunity." Accessed January 2025.

6. Supran, Geoffrey, and Naomi Oreskes. "Assessing ExxonMobil's Global Warming Projections." Science 379, no. 6628 (January 2023): 1-4.

7. Supran, Geoffrey, and Naomi Oreskes. "The Forgotten Oil Ads That Told Us Climate Change was Nothing." The Guardian, November 18, 2021.

8. Trump, Donald J. "Protecting American Energy from State Overreach." Executive Order, April 8, 2025.