Introduction On October 23, 2025, the Judicial Tribunal of Paris (Tribunal judiciaire de Paris) found in Greenpeace France and Others v. TotalEnergies SE and TotalEnergies Electricité et Gaz France that TotalEnergies and its French subsidiary engaged in misleading environmental advertising. For the first time, a court has held a major […]
Climate Litigation
318 posts
Today the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law published a report analyzing climate change lawsuits filed in United States courts while President Joseph R. Biden was in office. During the Biden administration, the federal government reversed course on the first Trump administration’s climate deregulation and embarked on a “whole-of-government approach […]
Last week, the Sabin Center filed an amicus brief on behalf of the National League of Cities (NLC) and the New York Conference of Mayors (NYCOM) in the case Association of Contracting Plumbers of the City of New York v. City of New York, No. 25-977 (2d Cir. Apr. 21, […]
Around the world, companies face claims that they have misled or deceived the public regarding the climate impacts of their products. While these cases might all be characterized as “climate deception” cases, there are meaningful distinctions in the plaintiffs’ allegations and claims. This post draws on recent and upcoming developments […]
In 2022, the United States Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), appropriating an unprecedented amount of money for climate spending programs. One of the IRA’s flagship investments was the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), a $27 billion program comprised of the National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), the Clean Communities […]
Amid the Trump administration’s cancellation of billions in federal funding for climate action, the Sabin Center has covered the numerous cases that have been brought in federal district courts to challenge federal grant cancellations. Among those cases is Climate United Fund v. Citibank, a challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s […]
Climate change presents one of the most disruptive challenges for contemporary legal systems. One aspect of climate change as a legal problem that is especially disruptive concerns the determination and extent of the duties of governments to address its causes and consequences. In this post, I analyze landmark climate litigation […]
As the climate crisis accelerates, it has become increasingly clear that its consequences are not distributed equally. Marginalized and vulnerable communities, particularly Indigenous peoples, low-income nations, and small island states are disproportionately affected despite contributing the least to climate degradation. This disparity has spurred calls for climate reparations: a framework […]