New York's effort to make fossil-fuel companies pony up $75 billion for the state's climate-change costs has hit another sizable legal roadblock.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel granted summary judgment to the Trump administration in its challenge to New York's Climate Change Superfund Act, finding the law preempted by federal law and permanently blocking the state from enforcing it.
New York enacted the law in 2024, creating a $75 billion fund to pay for infrastructure projects intended to help the state adapt to the effects of climate change. Rather than funding the program through general tax revenues, the law assigns the tab to fossil-fuel extractors and oil refiners deemed responsible for more than one billion tons of covered greenhouse-gas emissions between 2000 and 2024.
To be clear, we're not talking just about emissions in New York — or even the United States. The law calculates each company's share based on fossil fuels produced and emissions attributable to its products worldwide.
The Trump administration sued in May of 2025, arguing, among other things, that New York had wandered into territory reserved for the federal government. Castel agreed on two separate grounds.
First, he found the law preempted by the federal Clean Air Act. New York, in a rather impressive effort at hair splitting, argued its law doesn't actually regulate emissions; it simply requires companies to compensate the state for damage allegedly caused by past emissions.
Castel wasn't persuaded by that distinction. Relying heavily on the 2nd Circuit's decision in City of New York v. Chevron, he noted that imposing monetary liability based on greenhouse-gas emissions can itself operate as a form of regulation. And interstate greenhouse-gas regulation requires a uniform federal standard rather than a patchwork of individual state policies.
The fact that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently rescinded its greenhouse-gas “endangerment finding” doesn't change that analysis, Castel said. The question isn't whether the federal government is currently choosing to regulate greenhouse gases in a particular way; it's whether federal law leaves New York free to impose its own liability regime. He concluded it does not.
Then there's the international piece of the puzzle. Because New York's law calculates liability using worldwide fossil-fuel production and emissions, Castel also concluded it intrudes on the federal government's exclusive authority over foreign affairs.
Climate change is inherently global, he reasoned, and the federal government has pursued the issue through international agreements and diplomacy. Allowing an individual state to impose liability for conduct occurring abroad could interfere with that national approach.
And that remains true even though the United States has announced its withdrawal from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Whether the federal government's policy is to participate in international climate agreements or withdraw from them, Castel reasoned, that's still a federal foreign-policy decision — not New York's to make.
Notably, this isn't New York's first loss over the law. In late August, a federal judge in a separate challenge brought by West Virginia and other states reached essentially the same conclusion, finding the Superfund Act preempted by both the Clean Air Act and the federal government's foreign-affairs authority.
The administration also raised Commerce Clause and due process challenges, but Castel didn't need to reach them. The two preemption holdings were enough to resolve the case.
One thing to note: This isn't preliminary relief, either. Castel ordered judgment entered for the United States, declared the law unconstitutional, and permanently enjoined New York officials from enforcing it.
So, barring a successful appeal, New York's plan to send fossil-fuel companies a $75 billion climate bill has itself been put on ice.