The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute sued the state of Vermont in federal court last week over its Climate Superfund Act. The plaintiffs argue that the law violates both the U.S. Constitution and the federal Clean Air Act. If they prevail, other state superfunds, such as New York's, are likely to face similar challenges.
Vermont's law, which passed through both chambers of the state legislature with overwhelming support, fines domestic energy producers to fund a climate change adaptation project. (This program aims to help "human and natural communities"—left undefined—"households, and businesses in preparing for future climate-change-driven disruptions.") Like the New York superfund, Vermont's assesses entities that released at least a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide through fossil fuel extraction or crude oil refinement. But while New York hits companies that did this over an 18-year period, the covered period in Vermont stretches across three decades, from January 1995 to January 2025.
