Biz groups, states ask SCOTUS to block California emissions reporting laws

By Jonathan Bilyk | Legal Newsline
The Center Square

Business groups and a collection of two dozen other states have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and block California Democrats from setting a business emissions reporting policy for the entire country and forcing every big business – and many other smaller ones – throughout the U.S. to participate under the threat of stiff penalties and lawsuits.

On Nov. 10, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce led a coalition of national and California state advocates for businesses and farmers in filing a petition for emergency action at the Supreme Court.

In the petition, the coalition says the court must step in to prevent California Democratic lawmakers and state bureaucrats from violating the First Amendment and forcing businesses of many sizes, no matter the level of business they may do in California, from speaking on the subject of “climate change,” and doing so using terms and language set by the state government.

“Both laws are part of California’s open campaign to force companies into the public debate on climate issues and pressure them to alter their behavior,” the Chamber and its allies said in the petition. “The laws compel businesses to speak on climate change – even if they have said nothing about climate, emissions, or sustainability in the past.

“… These laws violate the First Amendment. No State may violate First Amendment rights to set climate policy for the Nation. Compelled-speech laws are presumptively unconstitutional – especially where, as here, they dictate a value-laden script on a ‘controversial subjec[t] such as climate change.’”

The petition specifically sought orders blocking the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and California Attorney General Rob Bonta from enforcing new state laws taking effect in the coming weeks that would compel large companies who do business in California to report their so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions, as well as those of every company with which they do business.

The laws will also require those companies to publish on their websites reports detailing the so-called “climate-related” risks that may arise from their business activities and use of their products. And they would force the companies to “assess the steps governments might take in response to those risks and analyze how those hypothetical governmental responses – and customers’ reactions – could affect the company decades into the future.”

The petition targets the state laws known as SB 253, which will take effect Jan. 1, and require the climate “analysis;” and SB 261, which will take effect July 1, requiring corporate and supply chain emissions reports.

The petition notes that California Democrats supporting the law have publicly stated they intend to use the laws to “embarrass” businesses and continue their campaign to force all businesses, everywhere in the country, to comply with California’s environmental preferences, policies and anti-petroleum zero emissions goals, regardless of the opinions of voters in the other 49 states.

The Chamber was joined in the action by the California Chamber of Commerce, the American Farm Bureau Federation, Los Angeles County Business Federation, Central Valley Business Federation and the Western Growers Association.

The business advocates had filed suit in 2024 against CARB and Bonta in Los Angeles federal court, challenging the two state laws.

A federal judge, however, denied the pro-business coalition an injunction blocking the state from enforcing the two state laws, saying the plaintiffs couldn’t show how the laws actually harm them, despite the vast number of businesses they represent.

The state had argued the laws merely regulate so-called “commercial speech,” which courts have given less protection than individual or organizational free speech.

The business groups, however, argued the kinds of speech being compelled by these laws are no less shielded by the First Amendment, simply because the targets of the speech-regulating laws are businesses.

“… The compelled statements here are nothing like commercial speech as this Court has defined it,” the business advocates said in their new Supreme Court petition. “Each law compels extensive, standalone statements on controversial climate matters – untethered to any product, service, or transaction.”

The Chamber and its allies have lodged an appeal with the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. However, they said that court has slow-walked the matter, setting oral arguments on Jan. 9, 2026 – eight days after SB 253 takes effect.

That panel has also declined so far to act on the petitioners’ request for an injunction blocking the state from enforcing the laws while they continue to appeal.

The petitioners said the lack of urgency from the Ninth Circuit prompted them to seek emergency action from the Supreme Court, to persuade some court to give some relief from the allegedly onerous and unconstitutional reporting mandates being imposed within weeks.

The potential “loss of First Amendment freedoms is inherently irreparable; the speech, once compelled, cannot be undone,” the Chamber and its allies said in their petition.

Once the reports are published online to comply with the law, they cannot be simply pulled back, meaning California will have achieved its goals of “embarrassing” the companies, regardless of how the litigation plays out later in courts, the petitioners said.

Four days after the Chamber and its allied organizations filed their petition, the state of Iowa and 24 other states filed a brief in support of the petition.

In that brief, the states urged the high court to side with the business groups. They asserted California is again attempting to use its position as the country’s most populous state and largest economic market to force the rest of the country to bow to its emissions and “climate” goals.

California and other states, business interests and the federal government under President Donald Trump are already currently locked in court fights over the attempts by California Democrats to force the makers of cars and trucks everywhere to comply with the state’s stringent vehicle emissions limits.

But with SB 253 and SB 261, the states say California is attempting to impose nationwide rules that the federal government has struggled to enact.

The states’ brief notes that the federal government attempted to impose a similar policy, but opted to shelve it when the same 25 states sued to “stop its attempt to impose an illegal greenhouse gas disclosure policy on publicly traded companies.”

“But what the (federal government) has voluntarily stayed during the pending litigation, California now attempts to impose,” the states wrote.

“… That imposition may have started as California green dreaming but will end with imposing nightmarish compliance costs and liability on companies across the country.”

California has yet to respond to the emergency petition before the Supreme Court.

And the high court has not yet taken action, according to its docket, as of Nov. 17.

Even as the petition remains pending before the Supreme Court, energy giant ExxonMobil has also challenged the same state laws in federal court in Sacramento. The company similarly asserts the laws would unconstitutionally force it to act as a mouthpiece for global-warming ideas and assessments that it fundamentally disagrees with – infringing on the company’s free-speech rights.

“California may believe that companies that meet the statutes’ revenue thresholds are uniquely responsible for climate change, but the First Amendment categorically bars it from forcing ExxonMobil to speak in service of that misguided viewpoint,” ExxonMobil said in its lawsuit.

That lawsuit remains pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.