Republicans introduce extreme bill to ban lawsuits against Big Oil forever

The U.S. Congress is considering an extreme bill that would make it illegal to sue the fossil fuel industry over the damage they cause to the planet, the economy, and our health. Last week, Big Oil’s top-funded Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Representative Harriet Hageman (R-WY) introduced a bill called the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026. They framed it as a way to “protect American energy from leftist legal crusades punishing lawful activity.” What it actually does is give the fossil fuel industry a permanent shield against lawsuits and state laws that seek to hold the industry financially accountable for climate change, and for misleading the public about the catastrophic health, economic and environmental consequences of using their products. The gun industry achieved a similar type of legal immunity in 2005. That law, called Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, has largely prevented victims of gun violence from seeking justice against irresponsible industry actors, and has sometimes resulted in victims being forced to pay gun industry legal fees. This would do something similar for the fossil fuel industry. But unlike the gun industry’s liability shield, there would be no exceptions at all. The bill states very clearly: “A qualified liability action may not be filed or maintained in any Federal or State court.” It defines a “qualified liability action” as two things: a “climate lawsuit” or an “energy penalty law.” A climate lawsuit is defined extremely broadly: Any suit… that is brought against any person engaged in the energy business that seeks damages, including punitive damages, injunctive or declaratory relief, or abatement, restitution, or any form of equitable or other relief for alleged past or future harm resulting directly or indirectly from climate change, including because of marketing, alleged misrepresentation, alleged failure to warn, or any other speech. According to the bill, the “energy business” only applies to fossil fuel companies. Solar, wind, geothermal, and nuclear companies are not defined as “energy”—which should tell you a lot about what Republicans mean when they use the term. The bill also bans “energy penalty laws,” defined as any state or local law that requires fossil fuel companies to pay for climate-related harms. That would eliminate “polluter pays” laws, like the climate superfund policies passed in New York and Vermont. These require major polluters to contribute to the cost of climate adaptation. In summary, the bill says: No state or municipality can file a climate lawsuit No state or municipality can pass or enforce a law making polluters pay for the consequences of their pollution Existing climate cases would all be dismissed Existing polluter pay laws would be voided Private citizens can never sue fossil fuel companies over climate harm All seems like things a really innocent person or entity would need! So why is Ted Cruz going this far? To understand that, you have to understand what’s happening in the courts right now. ”Today, there are 11 states and dozens of communities that together cover one in four people living in the United States suing Big Oil,” Mike Meno, communications director for the Center for Climate Integrity, told HEATED. The lawsuits span different courts, different states, and different allegations. But in general, Meno said, plaintiffs are saying “Hey—our communities are facing greater risks from wildfires, sea level rise, floods, droughts, and it’s going to cost us a lot of money to protect residents from those harms. The companies that knowingly caused these damages, they should have to pay, the same way that tobacco companies were made to pay for the public health harms that they knowingly caused.” While many of these lawsuits have been dismissed, others are moving forward—a scary prospect for Big Oil, which as you may have heard, has really been struggling financially lately. Honolulu’s case against Exxon and Chevron seeking billions in damages from rising seas and worsening storms is moving forward. Lawsuits in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine are also all moving past procedural stage. And most notably, the city and county of Boulder, Colorado’s lawsuit against Exxon and Suncor was recently allowed to proceed by the Colorado Supreme Court. So now, to avoid being forced to hand over internal documents and defend themselves in front of a jury, the oil industry has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. (The Supreme Court has agreed to review that case.) But oil companies don’t want to challenge each individual cause in court. They’d prefer to have blanket legal immunity so they never have to spend money or time defending themselves on the merits again. And the crazy thing is: The oil industry has already achieved legal immunity in a couple states. It hasn’t been covered much in mainstream media, but Utah and Tennessee recently passed laws shielding fossil fuel companies from climate lawsuits. And similar bills have been introduced and are gaining traction in a bunch of other red states, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Iowa, as part of a coordinated campaign orchestrated by right-wing activist Leonard Leo. But while state laws are good for Big Oil, nothing is sweeter than federal immunity. And if they achieve it, Meno says, the consequences could be catastrophic. ”We are not talking about Big Oil being above the law for one year or one presidential term,” he said. “If they were able to get something like this passed through Congress, it could be for all time.” “What’s really scary to think about is the bad behavior that fossil fuel companies have engaged in over the years,” Meno added. “How much worse do we think their behavior will get when they’re given that sort of get out of jail free card?” Despite the extreme nature of this bill, this story has been largely absent from mainstream press. And that’s perhaps understandable, because about 7,000 other fires are burning right now. But watchdog groups like the Center for Climate Integrity anticipated a bill like this was coming—and that it would drop at a very chaotic moment when no one had the capacity to pay attention. That’s why they asked Democrats to prepare. Last year, nearly 200 groups sent a letter to Democratic leaders in Congress, warning them that the fossil fuel industry was going to try to pass a liability waiver in a moment of political chaos. ”We have reason to believe that the fossil fuel industry and its allies will use the chaos and overreach of the new Trump administration to attempt yet again to pass some form of liability waiver and shield themselves from facing consequences for their decades of pollution and deception,” the groups wrote. “That effort—no matter what form it takes—must not be allowed to succeed.” And yet, so far, no Democratic lawmakers appear to have issued public statements responding directly to the bill. But Meno said that can easily change—if enough public pressure is applied. “The most important thing for anyone listening right now who’s alarmed about this is that they themselves contact their members of Congress, because we know that in these chaotic times, bad actors can exploit the confusion to try to rush through bad legislation,” he said. “And so the most important thing folks can do is really raise an alarm about this, share news about it online, and go to NoimmunityforBigOil.org to learn how to do that.” This post is a shortened version of today’s podcast episode, available at the top of this newsletter, on your podcast app of choice, or on YouTube. In the full episode, we go deeper into how the fossil fuel industry is spreading disinformation to build public support for legal immunity. We break down the specific legal arguments Big Oil’s lawyers are making, how those arguments are being parroted by bought-off politicians, and why those arguments only work if people don’t actually read the lawsuits themselves. It takes a lot of work to produce climate journalism…