Republicans in Congress are continuing their efforts to shield the fossil fuel industry from legal liability for its role in unleashing the heat-trapping gases linked to a cascade of deadly, record-setting disasters across the globe.
On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to debate and vote on a bill introduced in April by Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) titled the “Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026.” The sweeping bill aims to “prohibit liability against those engaged in the mining, extraction, production, refinement, transportation, distribution, marketing, manufacture, or sale of energy for damages or injunctive or other relief.”
The bill says that linking fossil fuel emissions to climate-related disasters lacks “scientific credibility”—a claim contradicted by decades of scientific research. If made law, it would give fossil fuel companies broad immunity from lawsuits stemming from these events.
A companion bill introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and three fellow Senate Republicans would similarly thwart lawsuits against the industry on the same basis. Both Wyoming and Texas are major fossil fuel-producing states.
“Energy security is national security,” Hageman said in a statement, after introducing the bill. “America’s energy producers should be protected from the dangerous legal precedent that would be set by the retroactive punishment of lawful activity.”
The legislation has a long way to go before becoming law, but the debate comes at a time when the oil industry and its allies in Congress and the Trump administration are aggressively pursuing strategies—some contradictory—to remove guardrails on fossil fuel use and production.
The bills come in response to mounting lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry, filed by cities, states and others, and as the U.S. Supreme Court is three weeks away from hearing an appeal by oil companies that could halt many of them.
“What we are seeing now is an all-out attempt by the fossil fuel industry and its allies to put Big Oil above the law and shield them from having to face accountability in court,” said Mike Meno, the communications director for the Center for Climate Integrity, an advocacy group.
Meno noted that 11 states, Washington, DC., two tribal governments and dozens of cities and counties have sued the oil and gas industries for deceiving the public about their climate impacts.
“More than one in four Americans live in a community that is fighting to put big oil companies on trial to hold them accountable for their climate deception and make them pay for the harm that deception has caused,” Meno added.
One of these legal cases, Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court on Oct. 5. In 2018, Boulder sued ExxonMobil and Suncor for damages to cover the costs of adapting to climate-related extreme heat and wildfires. Last year, the Colorado Supreme Court said the case could move to trial—a decision that Exxon and Suncor are now challenging in the country’s top court. The companies argue that federal rather than state law should cover greenhouse gas emissions.
Wednesday’s markup comes two days after the Trump administration’s latest attempt to gut carbon pollution standards, this time from existing coal and new gas power plants. On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule to repeal the Biden-era 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards.
The agency also proposed a supplemental rule Monday that would limit its authority to regulate power plant pollution going forward, saying greenhouse gas pollution from these facilities doesn’t pose a threat to public health.
In February, the Trump EPA overturned the landmark finding that greenhouse gas pollution harms public health—the basis for regulating greenhouse gases from transportation, the country’s biggest source of greenhouse gases. At the same time, it repealed ambitious tailpipe emissions standards set by the Biden administration.
It’s unclear whether the bill being marked up Wednesday will pass out of committee. But even if it doesn’t, some of its provisions could end up in other must-pass legislation.
“This is one piece of the bigger picture,” said Maggie Coulter, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “The federal government’s backing off regulations. This kind of Big Oil immunity would take the power away from states to go after companies for their deceptive practices.”
In the Suncor case, the industry argues that the federal government has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases after all.
In briefs submitted to the court, the Trump administration makes similar arguments.
“We don’t want states to regulate [greenhouse gas emissions] because the federal government’s got it covered,” Coulter said, noting the government’s position. “But the federal government’s actually rolling everything back and not regulating anything. They’re really talking out of both sides of their mouth.”
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Georgina Gustin covers agriculture for Inside Climate News, and has reported on the intersections of farming, food systems and the environment for much of her journalism career. Her work has won numerous awards, including the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, and she was twice named the Glenn Cunningham Agricultural Journalist of the Year, once with ICN colleagues. She has worked as a reporter for The Day in New London, Conn., the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and CQ Roll Call, and her stories have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post and National Geographic’s The Plate, among others. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
