Hawaii sues oil companies despite lawsuit by Trump administration

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – The Trump administration sued Hawaii late Wednesday in an attempt to block the state from filing lawsuits against oil companies for damages from climate change.

But that didn’t stop Hawaii’s governor and attorney general from taking legal action Thursday.

The state is suing seven groups of affiliated fossil fuel companies — big names like BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Shell, as well as the American Petroleum Institute — alleging deceptive conduct and failure to warn of the harmful effects of their products on the environment.

State lawyers are seeking a jury trial and monetary damages.

It follows several similar lawsuits across the country, including one by the City and County of Honolulu.

“The focus of these complaints typically has been about the deceptive marketing practices of companies that have sold fossil fuels, as opposed to being about the emission of carbon into the atmosphere itself. It’s about the extra carbon that ends up in the atmosphere because of the deception,” said Richard Wallsgrove, co-director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s School of Law.

The state’s lawsuit comes a day after the U.S. Justice Department announced it’s suing Hawaii and three other states — Michigan, New York and Vermont — claiming their actions against the oil industry are a constitutional overreach and conflict with President Donald Trump’s energy dominance policy.

The DOJ argues Hawaii is violating the Clean Air Act, which gives the Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate air pollution in the U.S. and “displaces” states’ ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions beyond their borders.

Trump supporters feel the climate lawsuits hurt efforts to lower energy costs.

“I do support states’ rights to file their own lawsuits and do things, but if it’s going to hinder a company that has impact across the nation, it doesn’t make sense to allow a few select blue states to raise the cost of energy for all Americans across the country,” said Republican state Rep. Diamond Garcia.

In a statement, state attorney general Anne Lopez condemned the federal lawsuit saying, “The use of the U.S. DOJ to fight on behalf of the fossil fuel industry is deeply disturbing and is a direct attack on Hawaii’s rights as a sovereign state.”

Gov. Josh Green added oil companies should bear the cost of the climate crisis, including the loss of 102 lives and billions of dollars in damage from the Maui wildfires.

But not everyone agrees.

“You can’t blame big oil companies for the Maui wildfires. There is so much other involvement with HECO, with malfunctions, with human error, and to blame that on climate and then sue and then point that blame on these national companies, it just isn’t right,” Garcia said.

Some Hawaii legal experts say the law is clear when it comes to deceptive practices.

“We all know that you can’t lie to consumers. That’s simple. That’s not really a matter of federal law. That’s a matter of state law,” Wallsgrove said.

“To have an administration that is simultaneously shutting down clean energy projects while trying to promote coal, a dying coal industry, it reeks of a sort of political mobster approach of protectionism for an industry that can’t stand on its own, because all of a sudden it’s being called to account for the damage that it’s caused in the past,” he said.

View Hawaii’s complaint against the fossil fuel companies.

View the Justice Department’s complaint against Hawaii.

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