Republican lawmakers attempt to shield big oil from climate lawsuits in ‘alarming’ bills

Republican lawmakers are attempting to shield big oil from having to pay for its contributions to the climate crisis, alarming environmental advocates.

New House and Senate bills, led by Harriet Hageman, a Wyoming representative, and Ted Cruz, a Texas senator, respectively, would give oil and gas companies broad legal immunity from policies and lawsuits aimed at holding the industry accountable for damages caused by its emissions.

Dubbed the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026, the proposal would protect the sector from liability. It is similar to a 2005 law that has largely blocked lawsuits against the firearms industry over gun violence.

The Republicans’ proposal is designed to stop a surge of climate accountability measures launched by states and municipalities – which Hageman’s office called “leftist legal crusades punishing lawful activity”, in a statement. In recent years, more than 70 state and local governments have sued oil companies for allegedly deceiving the public about the dangers of their products. Meanwhile, New York and Vermont have also passed climate “superfund” laws requiring major polluters to pay for damages from past emissions, with other states considering similar policies.

If passed, the new federal legislation would dismiss pending climate accountability lawsuits, void all climate superfund laws and block similar future efforts.

The proposals attempt to undermine the very foundations of climate accountability measures, said Delta Merner, lead scientist at the science hub for climate litigation at the science advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists.

Hageman, for instance, in a statement said her bill would “affirm” that the federal government has exclusive authority and jurisdiction over the regulation of greenhouse gases, but legal experts dispute that, Merner noted. The language attempts “to take away the ability for for local harms to be decided at the local and state level”, Merner said.

Cruz’s bill, meanwhile, attempts to discredit climate attribution studies – scientific analyses quantifying how much the climate crisis altered the likelihood or intensity of specific extreme weather events – on which some climate legal claims are based.

“To try to legislate that science away is something that’s really alarming,” said Merner.

This year, the top US oil lobby group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), said blocking “abusive” climate lawsuits was a top priority. Months earlier, 16 Republican state attorneys general asked the justice department for a “liability shield” for oil companies. And last year, both API and energy giant ConocoPhillips also pressed Congress on draft legislation to limit climate liability.

“Immunity is clearly something the industry has been after,” said Cassidy DiPaola of the pro-climate superfund group Make Polluters Pay. “We’re in a period where there’s a Republican trifecta that will basically bow down to the industry, and I think they view this moment as one of their biggest opportunities to get it.”

Industry groups have praised the federal proposal. In a joint statement, Mike Sommers, the API CEO, and Chet Thompson, the CEO of influential fuel lobby group American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, thanked Hageman and Cruz for the legislation, saying: “Congress should act decisively to reaffirm federal authority over national energy policy and end this activist-driven state overreach.”

Asked about advocates’ concerns about the new policy proposal, API referred the Guardian to its previous statement.

The bills’ introduction came as red states are also proposing to block climate lawsuits and superfund acts. Last week, Tennessee passed a measure blocking big oil accountability efforts, and Utah greenlit a similar law earlier this month. Other states are considering similar policies, but none of them are as straightforward about their goals as the federal proposals, said DiPaola.

“It’s honestly shocking how direct the federal lawmakers are being with with their wording,” she said. “We kind of anticipated it being a little bit more discreet, but they’re not hiding the ball whatsoever. They’re saying it out front: ‘You can’t hold us accountable.’”

The industry and its allies have made a variety of other attempts to thwart climate accountability efforts, including challenging superfund laws in court and attempting to have litigation thrown out.

“In some ways, this federal bill feels like a capstone [of the] multi-layered strategy that we’ve been watching unfold, where the fossil fuel industry is attacking climate accountability on several fronts at once,” said Merner.

The industry has seen mixed results. Some climate litigation, for instance, has been thrown out. But last week, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from the Trump administration that aimed to preemptively block Hawaii from suing big oil.

“The industry knows it’s vulnerable,” said Merner. “They are not totally confident they can win cases on their merits.”

Jay Inslee, a former Washington governor, has recently been raising concerns about the fossil fuel industry’s desire for a liability waiver, particularly since Hageman indicated in February that a federal proposal was in the works.

“Every elected official who cares about the interests of their constituents more than those of corporate polluters should oppose this disgraceful proposal,” Inslee said in a statement.

It’s not clear whether Republicans could muster the votes to pass the legislation as it is written. But the bills could help lay the groundwork for a similar measure to be slipped into a larger piece of must-pass legislation, or via the reconciliation process when measures can pass with a simple majority rather than the 60-vote filibuster threshold.

“We don’t think that the strategy is to pass this bill as a freestanding bill,” said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, which backs the litigation against the oil industry. “But bad things can happen at any minute, and we’ve got to be ready for it.”

The introduction of the federal legislation, Wiles said, “demystifies” oil industry allies’ objectives.

“If there was any doubt that they would try to do something this outrageous and this damaging to the justice system and to people’s rights to go to court to seek redress for harms, there’s no doubt anymore,” he said.