{"id":27831,"date":"2025-12-11T09:06:37","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T14:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/?p=27831"},"modified":"2025-12-16T10:41:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T15:41:49","slug":"climate-skeptics-rush-to-misuse-texas-v-blackrock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/2025\/12\/11\/climate-skeptics-rush-to-misuse-texas-v-blackrock\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Skeptics Rush to Misuse Texas v. BlackRock"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Texas v. BlackRock<\/em> (E.D. Tex.) (BlackRock<\/em>), a case in which 13 states claim that the institutional-investor defendants colluded to profit through coordinated output reductions at coal companies they partially owned, remains in its early stages, with discovery continuing through 2027. Already however, opponents of climate-risk mitigation have rushed to extract specious theories of antitrust harm from Judge Kernodle\u2019s partial denial of the motion to dismiss<\/a> (the BlackRock<\/em> MTD decision).<\/p>\n

Following procedural requirements, Judge Kernodle took as true plaintiffs\u2019 allegations that the BlackRock<\/em> defendants joined climate alliances and pursued related mitigation goals that \u201cnecessarily result in the reduction of coal output.\u201d Judge Kernodle also found plausible plaintiffs\u2019 allegations of antitrust harm to consumers, as reflected in rising prices during a period of decreased production by the relevant coal companies. Judge Kernodle did note that BlackRock may possess a valid defense to these allegations, stemming from long-term declines in coal consumption. But interests aligned with the BlackRock <\/em>plaintiffs already have assembled a house-of-cards antitrust argument<\/a> that any institutional investor factoring climate risk into its business decisions should face heightened scrutiny on routine portfolio acquisitions.<\/p>\n

A neutral analysis of the BlackRock<\/em> MTD decision does not justify imposing such legal burdens, which would hinder these investors\u2019 capacity to compete against their climate-indifferent rivals. This post seeks to clarify: (1) why the BlackRock<\/em> MTD decision remains far from proclaiming institutional investors\u2019 every climate consideration a proven anticompetitive output reduction; and (2) why institutional investors\u2019 \u201csolely for investment\u201d exemption from antitrust scrutiny still permits these investors to promote a wide range of climate-risk mitigation measures.<\/p>\n

The Court Has Not Yet Taken Up \u201cWeighty Economics Questions\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The BlackRock<\/em> complaint contains multiple antitrust claims<\/a>. The plaintiffs assert violations under Section 7 of the Clayton Act, claiming each defendant used its partial ownership of coal companies in a manner reasonably likely to reduce competition, to consumers\u2019 detriment. Plaintiffs also assert violations under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, claiming defendants collectively agreed to coerce the coal companies\u2019 implementation of a coordinated output reduction (reducing coal supply in order to intensify demand, raise prices, and boost profit margins). And Plaintiffs assert violations under state antitrust laws (not covered by this blog post).<\/p>\n

Judge Kernodle\u2019s MTD dismissal notes that the Texas complaint\u2019s \u201cfirst of its kind\u201d allegation of a \u201chorizontal agreement among investors to pressure competitors in another industry<\/em> to reduce output\u201d [italics in original] does not call for per se <\/em>antitrust analysis (an approach which assumes the anticompetitive harms of a given activity, and only considers whether defendants engaged in that activity). Instead, the court will conduct an elaborate rule-of-reason balancing, to \u201cdivin[e] the procompetitive or anticompetitive effects<\/a>\u201d of these defendants\u2019 business arrangements. Judge Kernodle makes clear that \u201cweighty economics questions\u201d remain to be resolved in later stages of litigation. Those questions will likely focus on defining an appropriate market to measure the competitive effects of defendants\u2019 actions, determining whether plaintiffs have persuasively pinpointed how defendants\u2019 actions harmed competition in these markets, and assessing defendants\u2019 claims of procompetitive benefits.<\/p>\n

Defendants Can Argue for a Broader Market Definition<\/h3>\n

To scrutinize antitrust defendants\u2019 effects on competition, courts typically first define a particular market in which the purported harm occurred or might occur. Judge Kernodle\u2019s MTD dismissal notes that defendants did not contest \u201cat this stage\u201d of litigation the plaintiffs\u2019 proposed focus on the markets for South Powder River Basin coal, and thermal coal. Yet defendants may have good reason to contest these market definitions at subsequent stages. Consideration of a broader market (one encompassing a wide range of energy sources that satisfy the relevant consumers\u2019 needs) could allow defendants to argue that modernization and diversification of product options in order to meet shifting economic conditions (such as mounting climate risk), have not, on balance, harmed energy consumers.<\/p>\n

By extension, defendants might call into question the status of coal-company output decisions as a but-for cause<\/a> of consumer harm, by pointing to across-the-board price increases for a diverse array of energy products. Alternately, if defendants could show that rising coal prices coincided with increased demand for substitutable energy products (such as renewable power, nuclear power, and\/or natural gas), this also may weaken the plaintiffs\u2019 claims of harm to consumers or to competition.<\/p>\n

Defendants Can Dispute Anticompetitive Effects<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The BlackRock <\/em>plaintiffs will face additional challenges meeting their burden of persuasion as this case progresses. The defendants only need to poke holes in plaintiffs\u2019 theory of harm. The defendants might start, for example, from plaintiffs\u2019 argumentative reliance<\/a> on: \u201cdifferent responses\u2026exhibited by\u2026publicly held companies\u2026whose shares Defendants acquired and who cut their output during a period of rising prices\u2026and\u2026privately held companies, who raised their output.\u201d This facile comparison between publicly and privately owned coal companies looks easily contestable.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs must convince the court that broader economic trends would not have prompted these same disparities between public and private coal companies\u2019 output. But given the escalating societal concerns and conspicuous financial risks associated with an emissions-intensive energy source like coal, public companies\u2019 greater susceptibility to reputational costs (alongside their added disclosure obligations<\/a>) may incentivize such categorical differences in output. That certainly offers a simpler account than the elaborate conspiracy plaintiffs allege, in which institutional investors promised transformational clean-tech innovations, pushed for robust emissions reporting while faking their focus on climate mitigation, and cynically captured inflated profits by peddling dirty fuels.<\/p>\n

The BlackRock <\/em>plaintiffs also advance tenuous antitrust causation claims through their frequent conflations of defendants\u2019 alleged coal-reduction, emissions-reduction, and net-zero pledges. This misapplies antitrust\u2019s output-reduction concerns to restraints on firms\u2019 negative externalities (greenhouse-gas byproducts), rather than on their supplying of economic goods (carbon-based energy sources). To date, Judge Kernodle has taken as true plaintiffs\u2019 assertion that a pledge to reduce coal emissions \u201cnecessarily means cutting coal production because \u2018there is no realistic path for a coal company to cut coal emissions other than by cutting production.\u2019\u201d Yet regardless of whether one doubts the fossil-fuel industry\u2019s pledges of near-term clean-coal deployment, we consider it unlikely that a merits-stage court analysis would give the plaintiffs\u2019 brusque, future-oriented pronouncement of \u201cno realistic path\u201d much factual weight in proving present market harms. We likewise find it ironic that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has signed off (both as a licensed attorney, and as an accountable public official) not only on this sweeping denial of clean-coal boosterism, but also on a recent letter<\/a> celebrating President Trump\u2019s \u201cBEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL\u201d [capitalization in original] agenda.<\/p>\n

Nor do AG Paxton\u2019s questionable claims stop there. In fact, the BlackRock <\/em>complaint comes closest to demonstrating an agreement to reduce coal output (rather than to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions) by repeatedly misrepresenting plaintiffs\u2019 own evidence on this topic. For but one example, the complaint brazenly cherry-picks from a Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) document<\/a>, so that NZAM appears to call on its members (including each BlackRock<\/em> defendant) to \u201cimmediately ceas[e] all financial or other support to coal companies\u2026building new coal infrastructure.\u201d Yet plaintiffs fail to disclose that the cited NZAM document does not require this particular approach. The approach is one of five climate-mitigation strategies that NZAM signatories are expected to choose from (other options include a \u201cphase out\u201d of thermal-coal investments on an unspecified timeline, or \u201crestricting financing for unabated coal power generation, i.e. without carbon capture and storage\u201d).<\/p>\n

Judge Kernodle\u2019s MTD decision, in turn, cites this NZAM quotation in multiple passages, at times reading it as an express NZAM requirement, rather than as a nonbinding option. Later stages of litigation will allow defendants to question whether membership in a climate alliance that permits an open-ended \u201cphase out\u201d of coal investments has evidentiary value in a lawsuit claiming real-world market effects between 2019 and 2022\u2014and whether plaintiffs established that evidence in bad faith.<\/p>\n

Former Congressmember (and ranking Republican on the House of Representatives\u2019 Antitrust Subcommittee) Ken Buck has catalogued further ways in which \u201cthe facts dispute the allegations<\/a>,\u201d including: no relevant coal-company manager being removed by proxy vote during the complaint\u2019s timeframe; certain defendants never voting against a single director; and purportedly colluding defendants consistently voting differently from each other.<\/p>\n

Defendants Can Show Procompetitive Benefits<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Should plaintiffs navigate these impediments to presenting a persuasive causal chain that culminates in anticompetitive effects, they still will need to address defendants\u2019 procompetitive defenses. Multiple procompetitive rationales for corporate climate pledges present themselves, particularly for pledges to reduce emissions. To begin with, given regulatory uncertainty<\/a> in the U.S. on coal emissions, as well as increasingly strict greenhouse-gas regimes in other advanced economies<\/a>, reducing industry emissions (especially through lower emissions intensity) may facilitate continued coal production, under whatever constraints the industry finds itself facing. Moreover, the net-zero commitments in this case\u2019s climate pledges need not even commit a signatory to reduced coal emissions (let alone reduced coal output), since by definition \u201cnet-zero\u201d calculations balance GHG additions to, and removals from, the atmosphere (with possibilities for offsets).<\/p>\n

Defendants also may argue that collective emissions pledges improve the quality of each investor firm\u2019s offerings, and follow antitrust law on standard-setting<\/a> by \u201cencourag[ing] competition with cleaner, more innovative, or more transparent products<\/a>.\u201d Along related lines, the Department of Justice\u2019s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission\u2019s (the Antitrust Agencies) statement-of-interest filing<\/a> on the BlackRock<\/em> MTD sets the stage for a green-transition procompetitive defense, particularly in investment markets: “an institutional investor\u2026could advocate in favor of the business in which it owns\u2026stock to exit one market in favor of another, more profitable market [and] could even pressure the management of the firm to undertake such a transition [so long as this transition] would reduce output in the first market in service of achieving higher profits in another.”<\/p>\n

This logic leaves ample room for institutional-investor defendants with substantial coal holdings to persuade the court that they did not seek to self-destruct<\/a> by advocating a net-zero transition\u2014but instead to increase profits (and improve their own investment products) by calling for energy-sector innovation that better fits evolving economic circumstances.<\/p>\n

Applications of the Antitrust Agencies\u2019 Statement of Interest Seem Overblown<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Amid these daunting challenges still faced by the BlackRock <\/em>plaintiffs, climate denialists already have doubled down on dubious antitrust rationales for stifling emissions-mitigation and disclosure initiatives.<\/p>\n

The \u201cwoke alert<\/a>\u201d advocacy organization Consumers\u2019 Research, for example, sent a September letter<\/a> to the Antitrust Agencies, celebrating Judge Kernodle\u2019s \u201cvindicat[ion]\u201d of the agencies\u2019 BlackRock<\/em> statement, which primarily argued that defendants overstated antitrust law\u2019s exemption from Section 7 scrutiny, provided to stock acquisitions made \u201csolely for investment.\u201d Consumers\u2019 Research highlights the Antitrust Agencies\u2019 assertion that \u201can investment is not \u2018solely for investment\u2019 if an investor has an intent to use stock to influence significantly or control management of the target firm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet from this measured premise, Consumers\u2019 Research mischaracterizes many reasonable business efforts to reduce climate risk as suspicious \u201cmixed motive\u201d practices demanding enhanced antitrust scrutiny. These suspect practices would include: an institutional investor\u2019s public statement encouraging clarity in corporations\u2019 greenhouse-gas reduction targets; an institutional investor\u2019s voting of shares against incumbent directors who fail to pursue net-zero alignment; and even an investor\u2019s mere vote for annual emissions disclosures like those increasingly required in most advanced economies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This legal pivot from anticompetitive harms and managerial control (in the Antitrust Agencies\u2019 statement), to a much broader array of climate-minded \u201cbusiness decisions,\u201d would vastly restrict the shareholder rights of institutional investors and their clients, while harming competition in investment markets by capriciously targeting firms that engage in broad categories of risk analysis. By contrast, the Antitrust Agencies\u2019 BlackRock <\/em>statement offered multiple indications that \u201cconferring with directors and management on best practices for\u2026oversight processes,\u201d or using \u201cinvestment holdings and market status to influence or change\u2026public reporting practices,\u201d does not inevitably depart from Section 7 solely-for-investment standards. Rather, these actions confirm the \u201ccritical role in corporate governance matters\u201d played by institutional investors. Subsequent rounds of the Texas v. BlackRock <\/em>litigation hopefully will clarify that such investors need not sit on their hands as the world burns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas v. BlackRock (E.D. Tex.) (BlackRock), a case in which 13 states claim that the institutional-investor defendants colluded to profit through coordinated output reductions at coal companies they partially owned, remains in its early stages, with discovery continuing through 2027. Already however, opponents of climate-risk mitigation have rushed to extract specious theories of antitrust harm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2562,"featured_media":27855,"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":[9440,69362],"tags":[69539,69930,69919,9415,69365,69933,69920,69927],"class_list":{"0":"post-27831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-climate-finance","8":"category-emissions","9":"tag-antitrust","10":"tag-clayton-act","11":"tag-climate-alliances","12":"tag-coal","13":"tag-emissions","14":"tag-sherman-act","15":"tag-state-attorneys-general","16":"tag-texas-v-blackrock","17":"czr-hentry"},"yoast_head":"\nClimate Skeptics Rush to Misuse Texas v. BlackRock - 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\/12\/11\/climate-skeptics-rush-to-misuse-texas-v-blackrock\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Climate Skeptics Rush to Misuse Texas v. BlackRock - Climate Law Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Texas v. BlackRock (E.D. Tex.) (BlackRock), a case in which 13 states claim that the institutional-investor defendants colluded to profit through coordinated output reductions at coal companies they partially owned, remains in its early stages, with discovery continuing through 2027. 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