Joe Biden’s ESG agenda is about to lose one of its biggest federal weapons, and state financial officers want the Trump administration to make sure it stays dead.
Seventeen state treasurers, auditors, and comptrollers, spanning 13 states with several sending multiple officers, submitted an August 3 letter urging the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to completely rescind the Biden administration’s climate-disclosure rules. The officials, who oversee public funds and retirement assets, also warned the SEC against replacing the mandate with a watered-down version carrying many of the same costs.
Read More: Nebraska Just Took a Sledgehammer to the ESG Machine Behind Corporate America
Iowa and Missouri Tell New York to Keep Its Climate Rules at Home
The SEC adopted the rules in March 2024, requiring public companies to provide detailed disclosures involving greenhouse gas emissions, climate-related risks, severe weather events, and their internal efforts to manage those risks. Companies would have been forced to build out new compliance systems for information that, in many cases, had little to do with their actual financial performance.
The state officers contended that Congress never gave the SEC authority to turn securities law into a backdoor climate program. The letter argued:
We support the proposed rescission of the climate-related disclosure rules and urge the Commission to finalize it in full. Doing so will restore the Commission’s disclosure framework to its proper, materiality-based foundation, relieve registrants and their shareholders of unjustified costs, and respect the limits Congress placed on the Commission’s authority.
The Trump SEC proposed eliminating the rules in May, calling them a “dramatic overreach” of the agency’s authority. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said disclosure mandates should focus on information materially affecting investors, not give federal regulators another way to dictate corporate behavior.
Then there is the staggering price tag.
The SEC estimates that rescission could save affected companies approximately $4.9 billion per year on an annualized basis over the next decade. The commission separately estimated that companies would avoid roughly $7.9 billion in initial compliance costs. Those are different calculations and should not be added together, but either figure exposes how much money Biden's regulators were prepared to waste on their climate crusade.
In an email to RedState, Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks said the proposed rescission would return the SEC to the job it was created to perform.
For years, the ESG movement sought to use the SEC to advance a climate agenda through disclosure mandates that went beyond material financial information and imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and investors. Rescinding this rule returns the SEC to its proper role as a neutral financial regulator focused on protecting investors and facilitating markets.
The Biden rules never took effect. The SEC stayed them in April 2024 after multiple legal challenges were consolidated in the Eighth Circuit, then stopped defending them in court in March 2025. They still require formal rescission, however, and the state officers are asking the Trump SEC to finish the job without preserving any pieces of Biden’s ESG machinery.
Companies already must disclose climate-related risks when those risks are financially material. Biden’s SEC wanted something much broader: a costly climate-reporting regime imposed without Congress. The Trump SEC now has the opportunity to end it.
Editor's Note: Do you enjoy RedState's conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join RedState VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member