Boulder Colorado
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AN PP 4 26
Across the country, Republican-led state legislatures are passing a slate of laws that effectively shield oil and gas companies from legal claims that they are responsible for the destruction and mounting toll caused by climate change. Fifteen laws have either been passed or are currently being debated in 11 states. Together, they threaten to remove long-standing tools for the public to hold corporations accountable.
A ProPublica investigation has found that most of these bills are part of a coordinated effort, orchestrated by a constellation of groups that share staff or have funding ties to the prominent conservative activist Leonard Leo, who is credited with placing conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. These groups have drafted state legislation, planned its dissemination and engaged a well-connected lobbying firm to get them signed into law.
The effort is unfolding as courts are weighing more than 30 significant lawsuits by states, counties and municipalities accusing fossil fuel companies of misrepresenting the risks their products posed to consumers and seeking to recoup the costs of disasters and other climate impacts like wildfire losses or coastal flooding that their products helped cause. A goal of the legislation is to block these cases from going forward and prevent new ones from being filed.
The strategy to establish state laws that will make it all but impossible to sue oil and gas companies was laid out in detail by a group of lobbyists and political operatives in December, during a panel presentation at the annual States and Nation Policy Summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council — the influential organization that brings together state lawmakers, corporate leaders and conservative activists to draft and promote legislation.
During the session, one of the panelists, Will Hild, the executive director of a nonprofit called Consumers’ Research, described the climate cases as a liberal effort to use the judicial system to exact a new tax on energy companies in the form of civil judgments. Another panelist, Oramel H. Skinner, the former solicitor general for Arizona and the executive director of the nonprofit Alliance for Consumers, warned that those judgments will trickle down to make citizens’ lives less affordable and ultimately make many of their choices — whether to own pickup trucks or purchase a side of beef — illegal.
ProPublica reviewed an audio recording of the event obtained by the nonpartisan watchdog group Documented.
Hild and Skinner had come to the session with a ready-made fix: a set of pre-written bills and plenty of funding.
Consumers’ Research and the Alliance for Consumers are both funded by organizations connected to Leo. ProPublica examined lobbying records across 25 states, federal tax disclosures for more than a dozen organizations and notes from other closed-door strategy sessions among ALEC members and found that several Leo-supported groups are part of a national strategy to give legal immunity to companies for their climate emissions.
Since 2021, Leo has been deploying a $1.6 billion gift through a series of nonprofits and other organizations that obscure the source and the recipients of donations — so-called dark money groups. Much of that money has been routed through a nonprofit judicial advocacy group Leo founded — now called The 85 Fund — which both receives and disseminates Leo’s funding. Many of these nonprofits are increasingly focused on issues related to climate change.
The panel session’s moderator, Michael Thompson, is a senior vice president at CRC Advisors, Leo’s for-profit Virginia-based political and corporate consulting firm. He also sits on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Advisory Council. Hild’s organization, Consumers’ Research, received more than 65% of its funding in 2024 through a dark money group called Donors Trust. The 85 Fund contributed more than $67 million to Donors Trust in 2024. Consumers’ Research also works closely with — and contracted more than $670,000 of work in 2024 to — CRC Advisors. Another panelist, Paul N. Watkins, was a legal fellow at Consumers’ Research. According to tax filings, his law firm received more than $2.2 million in 2024 from the group. As recently as 2024, Skinner was also counsel for Leo’s 85 Fund, according to the nonprofit’s tax filings.
= POWELL MEMO BS
“For decades, the left has leveraged immense resources to capture the institutions that shape our society — the legal system, universities, medical and scientific bodies, the entertainment industry, and our biggest corporations,” Leo wrote to ProPublica in a text message. “That takeover resulted in a radically woke culture that does not reflect the will of the American people, or the pillars of limited constitutional government that made our country great. That is why our enterprise supports organizations that are committed to crushing liberal dominance and restoring balance in the institutions that shape society.”
At the ALEC session, Skinner presented a model bill that would effectively bar cities and towns from bringing public nuisance lawsuits against corporations and others when the issue is a broad public harm like climate change. In several cases, plaintiffs have argued that the impacts of climate change — the buckling of a road from extreme swings in temperature, for example — are a “nuisance” caused by fossil fuel companies.
Nuisance claims are common in the American legal system, giving individuals, companies or communities a way to sue when someone else’s actions damage their property, degrade the health or safety of the environment around them or interfere with their rights. Under these laws, parties can ask for financial compensation or seek court orders to remedy problems, such as pollution. Skinner, however, argues that nuisance laws should only be used to address local, easily fixable problems, like excessive noise from a bar. His bill would curtail the use of public nuisance suits in climate cases by limiting liability for manufacturers and other businesses and giving state attorneys general the sole authority to bring them.
“Think really hard about every lever you have in your states to shut off the ability for this woke lawfare machine to churn,” Skinner told the audience. “The left’s goal is to reshape society around you using the courtroom.”
The second draft law, called the Energy Freedom Act, was produced by the policy nonprofit associated with Hild’s organization. It would, among many provisions, shield businesses from liability related to emissions of greenhouse gases if those releases did not violate the federal Clean Air Act.
Critics of the bills say they subvert the rights of local communities. They send the message that “you can pollute with impunity,” said Carly Phillips, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s really a thumb in the eye of places that are affected by climate change.”
The push to block climate suits across the states comes as several of the cases against the oil industry approach, or have already entered, the perilous legal phases of discovery, when plaintiffs will have the opportunity to seek confidential industry documents and depose oil executives. The stakes for oil companies are enormous. By some estimates more than $10 trillion in damages can be attributed to U.S. emissions.
:{:{There’s a reason why state and local governments have increasingly brought these suits. The frequency and cost of climate-influenced disasters, including severe storms, drought and flooding, continues to mount — between $350 billion and $450 billion in each of the last three years — stretching government budgets.}:
Significantly, the science that makes it possible to attribute how much any one disaster was influenced by climate change has steadily advanced. To cite one example, the March heat waves across the U.S. would have been virtually impossible without the emissions that have caused climate change, according to the European science group World Weather Attribution, and were about four times as likely to happen as they were a decade ago.}:
Boulder, Colorado, is among the places facing increasing droughts, more extreme precipitation and larger wildfires — all of which are significantly propelled by climate change linked to the emissions from the use of fossil fuels. The state has estimated the costs of these perils will run into the many hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2018, Boulder County sued Exxon Mobil and the Canadian oil company Suncor Energy, accusing the companies of “intentional, reckless and negligent conduct.”
Among its claims, the county alleged the oil companies engaged in a conspiracy to mislead the public and violated consumer protection rules by mischaracterizing the dangers of their products. They accused the oil companies of creating a public nuisance by altering the environment and leaving the county to pay to abate growing hazards such as the flooding that tests roads and bridges. Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy have never filed a response in Colorado but asked for the case to be dismissed.
Ever since, the lawsuit has been mired in a dispute over whether Colorado courts were the correct venue, with the state Supreme Court ultimately ruling last May that they were. Suncor filed to the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider, and this fall it will weigh the company’s petition asking whether federal environmental law preempts the state law.
:{:{The high-profile national court case is just one facet in an increasingly tense fight over liability for the fossil fuel industry. In January, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest fossil fuel industry group in the United States, said fighting the climate liability lawsuits was one of its top priorities in 2026. Lobbying records for the group from last year show that it advocated for legislation to protect oil producers from climate lawsuits at the state level. }:
The Trump administration; other industry groups, including the Chamber of Commerce; and several of the nonprofit advocacy groups associated with Leo have argued that state courts are the wrong venue for claims that ultimately concern emissions that drift widely across borders, and they wish to see other cases moved or dismissed. They say that because the federal government already has the authority to regulate those emissions, the federal courts, not the states, should hear the claims.}:
In an interview, Hild told ProPublica that he sees the suits as an illegitimate effort to enact policy through the courts and to “regulate the entire U.S. economy from a single state.”
In an email, Skinner wrote: “Our effort is not one focused on climate change. But it is true that left-wing activists and their dark money donors have put vast sums of money and years of groundwork into pushing a coast-to-coast campaign of climate-focused public nuisance lawsuits.”
Neither Watkins nor Thompson responded to requests for comment.
When Skinner and Hild finished their presentation at ALEC they made a QR code available to download the language of the model bills and directed the audience to a woman named Catherine Gunsalus, who was in the back of the room. She would be able to answer any questions, they said.
Gunsalus until recently worked for the Heritage Action Fund, the political and lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation, the Trump-aligned think tank that is most recently known for promoting the Project 2025 agenda. Records show that Gunsalus has also lobbied in collaboration with another Leo-affiliated group, Americans for Public Trust.
In April 2025, she formed a lobbying firm called Varidon Strategies and began registering in states almost immediately afterward, according to records. By mid-summer, Varidon was representing Alliance for Consumers Action Fund; Consumers’ Research; The Honest Election Project, an affiliate of The 85 Fund; as well as other Leo entities in 25 states. In the majority of those filings, Varidon used an email address at the domain of Holtzman Vogel, a Virginia-based law firm that is often retained by Leo’s organizations.
Gunsalus did not reply to a detailed list of questions.
In the four months since the ALEC summit, there has been substantial activity in the states where Varidon has registered. On Jan. 5, representatives in Missouri introduced the loosely related Eliminate Criminal Profiteering Act, which could stop revenues flowing to law firms from settlements in the sort of nuisance suits often used in climate cases. Two days later, legislators took up the Public Nuisance Reform Act, which proposes narrowing the definition of what could be considered a nuisance.
That same month, similar bills were introduced in Indiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee. In February, eight more followed in Oklahoma, Iowa, South Carolina, Utah, Louisiana and Kansas. Skinner, who is registered to lobby in Kansas, was invited to testify in a hearing about that state’s bill and launched a new “End the Lawfare” website targeting the “left-wing” agenda. As of April 2, versions of the model legislation offered at the ALEC meeting have been introduced across 11 states altogether. In Utah, the governor has signed two related bills into law, and in Tennessee and Indiana, bills are awaiting their governors’ signature.
The more states there are with some sort of waiver in place, the narrower the pathway for cities and states to seek redress as environmental conditions worsen, and the costs continue to rise. Hild and Skinner and the Leo network’s bills also serve another purpose: teeing up a conflict that pits states against one another, a conflict that only the Supreme Court or Congress can finally resolve.
As Hild put it at the ALEC gathering, “This is economic civil war.”
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4 23 email drilled
on Monday this week the Supreme Court finally weighed in on whether it would take up the jurisdictional argument that oil companies are making in multiple climate liability suits. The companies have been arguing for the past five years that these cases, brought on behalf of municipalities and states, are asking state courts for judgements that would impact federal policy and thus belong in state court. Attorneys representing state and local arguments have argued that their cases—which claim that oil companies' delay tactics on climate increased the cost of adaptation and thus the companies are liable for a portion of those costs—were appropriately filed in state court. Every circuit court has agreed, as has the Department of Justice, and now the Supreme Court as well.
"The companies' history of climate, deception, and misinformation, coupled with their unchecked fossil fuel production promotion, and so on, it makes them liable for at least some of the costs that these communities face, so that these costs don't fall entirely on the taxpayers." — Marco Simons, EarthRights International, attorney representing Boulder and other Colorado municipalities against oil companies.
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Suncor, a Canadian company whose U.S. subsidiary is headquartered in Colorado, is a defendant in the Boulder climate case.
It's big news, but what will it mean for these cases? Some of them, including Boulder, which was the case invoked in the initial petition to the Supreme Court, will go back to arguing against other motion-to-dismiss arguments in state court. But others, starting with Hawaii, will move towards trial and that's a really big deal because it means some of these cases will get into the phase of litigation oil companies have been trying their hardest to avoid: discovery. In civil cases, the discovery phase is when companies will be asked to hand over documents and make their executives available for depositions. The evidence gathered during discovery in these cases could spell trouble for the oil company defendants in multiple other cases, including ongoing fraud suits in Massachusetts and Minnesota, a RICO, or racketeering, case filed on behalf of Puerto Rican municipalities, and even international cases given that the majority of these companies operate globally.
"At this point, we're optimistic about moving forward and securing justice for our clients, who have been facing significant harms and costs due to the climate crisis while the oil companies, of course, continue to profit from their deception and misinformation." —Marco Simons, EarthRights International
[audio]
But of course, oil majors have not put all their eggs in the jurisdictional basket. As I've been writing about for years now, one of the key arguments they're making in these cases is a First Amendment argument. In broad strokes, the argument goes like this: anything they've ever said about climate was in the interest of shaping policy, which makes it political speech (or "petitioning speech" in legalese), and therefore protected. It was clear this was going to be the driving force of these cases when the oil company defendants appointed Chevron's attorney, Ted Boutrous with Gibson Dunn, as their spokesperson across the board. Boutrous is a renowned First Amendment attorney, and Gibson Dunn is the firm that brought and won the most famous corporate free speech in the country's history: Citizens United. And now, even as the broader jurisdictional argument seems to be dead in the water, oil companies have formulated another one: the First Amendment question in these cases is foundational, and is not something that state courts should be weighing in on.
That argument has already been briefed in multiple cases, and it's only a matter of time before it makes its way to the most pro-corporate Supreme Court this country has had in decades...maybe ever. In the meantime, cases will move forward, and it's possible that so many cases moving into discovery will prompt discussion of a tobacco-style settlement. But I wouldn't go counting those chickens just yet.
big intercept:
...Who exactly are these eco-extremists? Under a section titled “environmental rights extremism,” a November 2019reference guide to “violent extremism” published by the Colorado Information Analysis Center, a fusion center, and other state security agencies, which was released as part of BlueLeaks, lists a range of groups. Among others, they listed the animal liberation group Direct Action Everywhere, which has removed animals from factory farms in rescue actions, and the Earth Liberation Front, which had its heyday committing arsons in the ’90s. Also listed were East Boulder County United, a grassroots organization that promotes community consultation on oil and gas development; and 350 Colorado, the local chapter of a well-known national climate organization. Both groups have participated in and promoted nonviolent civil disobedience as a tactic to force public officials to appropriately address the climate crisis...
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Dempsey, a Managing Director at FTI, manages Energy in Depth and lists himself as an editorial editor WesternWire, another front group run for Western Energy Alliance, another oil trade association like IPAA. Dempsey and a colleague were recently recorded by a lawyer for EarthRights International who called them out for being agents of Exxon, and pretending to be journalists. Exxon is a defendant in the Boulder Colorado lawsuit that EID and WesternWire have tried hard to malign. Dempsey used to work for Senator James Inhofe
ref
https://earthrights.org/media/exxon-sends-undisclosed-agents-to-question-opposing-counsel-about-colorado-climate-litigation/
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:{Valentina Stackl
valentina@earthrights.org
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January 15, 2019. Washington, D.C. — Exxon-sponsored consultants posing as journalists attempted to question EarthRights International (ERI) General Counsel Marco Simons, who represents three Colorado communities in climate change litigation against the oil giant, over email and in a recorded phone call yesterday.
[transcript]
“Western Wire” describes itself as “the go-to source for news, commentary and analysis on pro-growth, pro-development policies across the West,” but is staffed by a public relations firm under a contract to the Western Energy Alliance (WEA), a secretive oil and gas association. They were established in 2017 and publish stories that portray the climate lawsuits as a “conspiracy.” WEA does not disclose its members – but its board includes an Exxon executive, Greg Pulliam.
Boulder County, San Miguel County, and the City of Boulder sued Exxon and Suncor last year for their role in contributing to climate change harms, and ERI represents the communities in court. Because legal ethics rules prohibit attorneys from talking with agents of opposing parties without their attorneys present, Simons refused to talk with the Western Wire staff “if you’re representatives of Exxon in any way.” While the Western Wire staff said they did not know the members of WEA – the organization that sponsors them – they did not dispute that they were representatives of Exxon.
The Western Wire staff involved are Michael Sandoval and Matt Dempsey, listed as Western Wire’s “Managing Editor” and “Opinion Editor,” respectively. Neither, however, is a journalist. Dempsey is listed on the website of FTI Consulting as a Managing Director of Strategic Communications. Sandoval’s name is not listed on FTI’s website, but his LinkedIn page lists him as a Director of Strategic Communications at FTI, and he was reached through FTI’s general phone number. In fact, Sandoval confirmed that Western Wire was staffed by employees of FTI Consulting under a contract to WEA.
The call was recorded with the consent of both sides; here is a full transcript and a recording.
Western Wire is not the only fossil fuel company front group. ERI has produced a fact sheet on several industry initiatives to present misleading information.
The Colorado climate litigation is still in the early stages. Suncor and Exxon moved the case to federal court, and the plaintiffs are now seeking to return the case to Colorado state court, where it was initially filed. Several other cities, counties and states across the country have filed similar climate accountability lawsuits in the past year and a half. ERI is joined in representing the plaintiffs by David Bookbinder, Chief Legal Counsel of the Niskanen Center, and Kevin Hannon of the Hannon Law Firm LLC.
For more information about the Colorado climate accountability lawsuit and these communities’ efforts to fight climate change, please see:
From San Miguel County: :{https://www.sanmiguelcountyco.gov/514/Climate-Accountability:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;border:0px;font-weight:400"):}:
From the City of Boulder: :{https://bouldercolorado.gov/climate:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;border:0px;font-weight:400"):}:
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https://legalnewsline.com/stories/511398628-in-suing-exxon-over-climate-change-boulder-is-hoping-company-s-deep-pockets-will-pay-for-its-left-wing-agenda-group-says
BOULDER, Colo. (Legal Newsline) – It remains to be seen if Exxon will fight the latest climate change lawsuit against it in the same way it is attacking the first round, by scrubbing municipal documents for evidence of hypocrisy by the public officials filing them.
According to a conservative group following the case, mounting such a defense might be overkill. The lawsuit filed by Boulder, Colo., and two Colorado counties is so frivolous, Exxon could end up seeking reimbursement for the costs of defending itself, according to Mountain States Legal Foundation.
William Perry Pendley, president of MSLF, says he isn't surprised that politicians in Boulder are going through Exxon's deep pockets "to pay for their costly, radical, left-wing boondoggles."
"But taxpayers who think at least they will not have to pay for this pricey misadventure and might even get some tax relief if it is successful, should think again," Pendley said.
"This lawsuit could not be more frivolous and if the judges do what other judges have done, legal sanctions and hefty fines will be imposed."
To defend itself from the California lawsuit, Exxon is seeking to depose government officials and a private lawyer in Texas court over whether their allegations of impending climate change-caused doom are contradicted by bond offerings that make no mention of it.
Asked if Boulder ever disclosed climate change-related threats to its property in any bond offerings, the City declined to comment.
It's unclear whether the bond argument is a possible defense for Exxon in Colorado, and the company did not return a request for comment.
As for Boulder, which filed its lawsuit with Boulder and San Miguel counties, its most recentofficial statement does not include references to climate change.
The official statement on acquisitions of land does not contain the terms “climate change,” “weather” or “global warming.”
Pendley said there is no science to support the lawsuit. Judges in the California lawsuits have yet to rule on motions to dismiss filed by the energy industry.
"Causation between the alleged inactions of the companies and the imagined harms is missing in its entirety and the demand that whimsical injuries be redressed (‘Help us pay to paint our streets white,’ one imagines) is laughable," Pendley said.
Addressing the bond topic last week was David Bookbinder of the Niskanen Center, which is one of two nonprofits representing Boulder on a pro bono basis. A third firm is taking as much as a 20% contingency fee, according to Boulder County's website.
Bookbinder was a speaker at an American Enterprise Institute discussion of California climate litigation the same day his lawsuit was being filed in a Colorado state court. He used an expletive to describe Exxon’s strategy and said that he was “ashamed” of the law firm representing the company.
“If we needed more evidence that no one thinks this was improper or fraudulent or disingenuous, my former adversaries in the plaintiffs securities bar – those people are extremely aggressive. The time lapse between bad news coming out and lawsuits filed by what were called the ‘strike bar’could be measured in, you know, one day, 48 hours, 72 hours, maybe four days – 96 hours,” Bookbinder said.
“There have been no lawsuits filed against any of these cities for their bond disclosures. That should tell you something as well.”
In 2017, the counties of Marin, Santa Cruz and San Mateo and the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Cruz and Imperial Beach filed suit against dozens of energy companies, including Exxon and 17 other Texas-based businesses, over climate change. The company has previously been targeted by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York.
“It is reasonable to infer that the municipalities brought these lawsuits not because of a bona fide belief in any tortious conduct by the defendants or actual damage to their jurisdictions, but instead to coerce ExxonMobil and others operating in the Texas energy sector to adopt policies aligned with those favored by local politicians in California,” attorneys for the company wrote.
In doing so, they must have lied to potential investors in their respective bond offerings, the company claims.
Statements made to potential investors contradict allegations made by the municipalities when they sued the energy industry, the filing says.
For example, San Mateo County’s complaint says it is “particularly vulnerable to sea level rise” and that there is a 93% chance the county experiences a “devastating” flood before 2050. However, bond offerings in 2014 and 2016 noted that the county “is unable to predict whether sea-level rise or other impacts of climate change or flooding from a major storm will occur."
Bookbinder noted that the offerings came with a statement regarding a final paper from the California Climate Change Center that said property in San Francisco Bay is vulnerable to impacts associated with sea-level rise.
But the cities did not present an opinion on the accuracy of those claims, which was noted by Devin Watkins, an attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who attended the event.
The CEI has called on the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the matter.
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