When policymakers talk about the burden of energy costs on American families, the conversation tends to focus on rising utility bills and higher prices at the pump. But there’s a cost building quietly in the background — one that never appears on a receipt, never gets debated on the floor of Congress, and never shows up in a headline about gas prices.
A growing wave of public nuisance lawsuits regarding climate change is working its way through state courts, and if successful, these suits would amount to one of the most significant hidden taxes on American energy consumers in recent memory.
Since 2017, more than 30 lawsuits have been filed by municipalities and state governments against American oil and gas producers, including Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Baltimore, Honolulu, Michigan, and Boulder, Colorado, among others. Each case rests on a theory of “public nuisance,” a common law doctrine historically limited to narrow, localized harms.
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Courts have long declined to extend it to lawful products, third-party conduct, and cumulative social factors. But climate change litigation involves all three of those simultaneously.
The damages sought make the consumers’ stake concrete. Chicago’s complaint seeks billions. Oregon’s Multnomah County is demanding a $51.55 billion abatement fund. New York’s December 2024 law seeks $75 billion from out-of-state energy producers while explicitly exempting the New Yorkers who use their products. Total damages requested across all pending cases have run into hundreds of billions of dollars.
David Bookbinder, a former counsel of record in the Boulder County lawsuit, acknowledged in October 2025 that the litigation strategy functions as “an indirect carbon tax,” in which oil companies facing liability pass costs to consumers who buy their products.
This is an explicit carbon-pricing mechanism that will bypass congressional approval by leveraging tort liability in plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions. A recent Buckeye Institute analysis puts it plainly: judgments and settlements of this magnitude “act as a massive corporate tax, forcing energy producers to raise prices in order to offset higher costs.”
Those costs hit American families at the pump, when paying utility bills, or in the heating budget. These lawsuits are a regressive energy tax imposed without a single vote by the people’s representatives. In other words, taxation without representation.
The federal response has been appropriately skeptical. The Supreme Court in 2021 rejected New York City’s nuisance claims against Chevron for global emissions. However, the court has now agreed to hear Boulder County v. Suncor Energy, where it will weigh whether federal law preempts state and local climate tort claims.
The Trump administration issued an executive order to reject this same legal theory, and a favorable ruling could clear the docket of similar cases nationwide.
These efforts reflect the correct structural instinct: climate emissions policy is a matter of national scope and does not fall within the purview of local jurisdictions.
I honorably served eight years as Michigan’s attorney general. When my office pursued major litigation, it did so with sovereign standing, precise coordination, thorough internal legal review, rigorous institutional oversight, and direct accountability to Michigan voters.
In 2024, Michigan AG Dana Nessel recruited outside law firms to pursue climate lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry, despite concerns the cases would enrich trial lawyers and raise energy costs. Now, she has expanded that effort with a federal antitrust lawsuit against petroleum companies, a move that threatens affordable, reliable energy while worsening Michigan’s growing energy affordability crisis.
These state court lawsuits bear little resemblance to the old model utilized during my service. Many are structured around contingency-fee arrangements with outside litigation funders whose financial interests have nothing to do with sound public policy. Individual cities and counties lack the authority and capacity to manage litigation of this consequence.
The appropriate mechanism for states with legitimate concerns about energy industry conduct is the office of the attorney general, not the city solicitor or a contingency-fee firm retained by a county commission.
Consolidating this litigation within AG offices would restore institutional discipline, ensure proper coordination with federal authorities, and align the legal strategy with the broader interests of the state.
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Climate policy is a legitimate subject for serious governance. The question is not whether we need to have that conversation; we do. The real question is whether to have it in the open forum through accountable legislative processes, or to route it quietly through courtrooms in ways that raise consumer energy costs without public debate.
For American families already navigating real affordability pressures, that choice has real consequences. Policymakers at the state and federal levels should treat it accordingly.
Bill Schuette served as a member of the U.S. House, director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture, Michigan state senator, judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, and as the 53rd Attorney General of Michigan from 2011 to 2019.