{"id":27737,"date":"2025-11-24T12:19:59","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T17:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/?p=27737"},"modified":"2025-11-24T12:19:59","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T17:19:59","slug":"looking-back-at-u-s-climate-litigation-during-the-biden-years-and-some-thoughts-on-emerging-trends-during-the-second-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/2025\/11\/24\/looking-back-at-u-s-climate-litigation-during-the-biden-years-and-some-thoughts-on-emerging-trends-during-the-second-trump-administration\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Back at U.S. Climate Litigation During the Biden Years\u2014and Some Thoughts on Emerging Trends During the Second Trump Administration"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law published a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/scholarship.law.columbia.edu\/sabin_climate_change\/260\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">report<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> 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\u2019s climate deregulation and embarked on a \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov\/briefing-room\/statements-releases\/2021\/01\/27\/fact-sheet-president-biden-takes-executive-actions-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad-create-jobs-and-restore-scientific-integrity-across-federal-government\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">whole-of-government approach to combatting the climate crisis<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u201d Many states and municipalities pursued their own efforts to mitigate and prepare for climate change, while other states undertook climate deregulatory efforts. During the four years of the Biden administration, many areas of the U.S. experienced disasters linked to and intensified by climate change, including <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/08\/29\/climate\/hurricane-ida-category.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">hurricanes<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s43247-024-01346-2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">extreme heat<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/08\/10\/climate\/hawaii-fires-climate-change.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">wildfires<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The report published today analyzes the <\/span><b>630 climate cases<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> filed in federal and state courts during this four-year period, with these policies and climate events as their backdrop and subject matter. All of the cases are found in the Sabin Center\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.climatecasechart.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Climate Litigation Database<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. The report\u2019s analysis does not assess the outcomes of the cases, many of which remain pending. Instead the report distills elements of the<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">cases: what goals the litigation aimed to achieve, who the parties were, and the underlying subject matter and substantive law. The analysis\u2014which builds on the Sabin Center\u2019s reports on climate litigation during the first Trump administration (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/scholarship.law.columbia.edu\/sabin_climate_change\/85\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Year One<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/scholarship.law.columbia.edu\/sabin_climate_change\/64\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Year Two<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/scholarship.law.columbia.edu\/sabin_climate_change\/35\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Full Term<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">)\u2014provides a quantitative overview of these characteristics of climate litigation. The report concludes with a discussion of how the trends in U.S. climate litigation may be evolving during the second Trump administration as the U.S. federal government once again reverses course on its climate agenda.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Highlights from the Quantitative Assessment<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The report assigns each case to one of <\/span><b>six trend categories<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> based on an analysis of the intended effect of the plaintiffs\u2019 climate-related claims. To provide a high-level view of the landscape of U.S. climate litigation, the analysis simplifies the trend categories into four \u201cpro\u201d and two \u201ccon\u201d categories, based on whether a case\u2019s goals are oriented towards advancing climate change mitigation and adaptation or are oriented toward undermining or eliminating climate protections.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">During the Biden Years, approximately <\/span><b>two-thirds of the climate cases filed were classified in one of the four \u201cpro\u201d climate categories<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Continuing a trend seen during the first Trump administration, <\/span><b>cases in the \u201cIntegrating Consideration of Climate Change into Environmental Review and Permitting\u201d category predominated<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The <\/span><b>percentage of \u201ccon\u201d cases increased each year<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, starting at 24% in 2021 and climbing to 36% in 2024 and the first 20 days of 2025.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The volume of climate cases brought by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) far exceeded the volume of cases brought by any other category of plaintiff. <\/span><b>NGOs were plaintiffs in 367 of the 630 U.S. cases<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (58%) in the Climate Litigation Database during the four years of the Biden administration.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">During the Biden administration, <\/span><b>cases involving fossil fuel extraction, processing, and transport (118 cases) represented the dominant category of cases<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Other sectors with at least 5% of cases filed were wildlife, forest and land management, real estate development, power plants, transportation, and vehicle emissions and fuel.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>Future Trends<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The about-face in federal climate change policies will likely be the primary factor reshaping climate litigation trends in the U.S. during the second Trump administration. The report discusses the following potential shifts or themes:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><b>Invocation of constitutional arguments to defend Biden-era climate change policies. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">During the first months of the second Trump administration, there have been numerous lawsuits filed to defend climate change legislation and regulatory actions, including a number of lawsuits challenging the terminations of climate change-related funding awarded under the Inflation Reduction Act and other statutory authorities. Plaintiffs\u2019 claims include that the Trump administration acted in excess of its constitutional authorities.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><b>A reorientation towards cases that seek transparency from the Trump administration regarding climate change information and its actions to address climate change.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Lawsuits in which plaintiffs seek to compel transparency by government actors and to ensure scientific integrity are once again front and center, as they were during the first Trump administration.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><b>The United States moving into a role as a deregulatory plaintiff.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A likely trend during the second Trump administration is federal involvement as a plaintiff or other litigation participant challenging state and local climate change policies and actions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><b>Lawsuits with climate change-related deregulatory goals brought against private defendants. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">More lawsuits alleging that private entities violate legal obligations by taking climate change into consideration could be expected in the coming years as federal frameworks guiding companies\u2019 actions addressing climate risk are withdrawn or abandoned and some states target ESG- and climate-focused corporate actions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><b>Individual plaintiffs asserting \u201cpro\u201d climate claims. <\/b>The number of climate washing cases brought by consumers under state consumer protection laws seems poised to increase, and potentially on the horizon are more cases in which individual plaintiffs seek compensation or other relief for noneconomic climate change-related harms.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can read the full report <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/scholarship.law.columbia.edu\/sabin_climate_change\/260\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">here<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019s climate deregulation and embarked on a \u201cwhole-of-government approach to combatting the climate crisis.\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3543,"featured_media":27740,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5673],"tags":[65696],"class_list":{"0":"post-27737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-litigation","8":"tag-climate-litigation","9":"czr-hentry"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Looking Back at U.S. Climate Litigation During the Biden Years\u2014and Some Thoughts on Emerging Trends During the Second Trump Administration - Climate Law Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/2025\/11\/24\/looking-back-at-u-s-climate-litigation-during-the-biden-years-and-some-thoughts-on-emerging-trends-during-the-second-trump-administration\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Looking Back at U.S. Climate Litigation During the Biden Years\u2014and Some Thoughts on Emerging Trends During the Second Trump Administration - Climate Law Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law published a report analyzing climate change lawsuits filed in United States courts while President Joseph R. 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