D.C. sued four oil companies. Now Republicans are trying to undermine the lawsuit
Even some advocates for D.C. autonomy were surprised by how targeted and specific the new policy rider is.
It’s a mere six lines of text quietly dropped into a 204-page congressional spending bill, but that could be enough to upend a five-year-old legal battle between D.C. and four of the world’s biggest oil companies.
On Sunday night, the House Appropriations Committee released draft text of the spending bill that includes federal expenditures in D.C. As usual, the bill also included a number of policy riders, which dictate specific local policies (usually prohibiting liberal priorities).
If passed as is, the riders would repeal D.C.’s medically assisted suicide law, prohibit the city from using its traffic cameras, forbid city funds from being used to subsidize abortions, stop D.C. from legalizing the sale of recreational cannabis, and end non-citizen voting in local elections, among other targets. Some are longstanding attacks on local autonomy (this is why the city’s marijuana situation remains muddled despite being one of the first jurisdictions in the country to legalize it), while others have been proposed before but never made it into law.
But tacked onto that list was a brand new and oddly specific rider prohibiting D.C. from using its marquee consumer protection law in environmental claims against oil and gas companies. That law prohibits any type of business from engaging in unfair pricing, unconscionable business conduct, or deceptive advertising in D.C.
It was that final provision that spurred a 2020 lawsuit from the D.C. attorney general accusing ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP of “systematically and intentionally misleading District consumers about the role their products play in causing climate change.” (A similar lawsuit was filed by an environmental group against Washington Gas in 2022, but dismissed on procedural grounds.)
The four companies have been aggressively fighting the lawsuit since then, but were handed a defeat when a D.C. judge rejected their request to dismiss the suit on constitutional grounds earlier this year.
The effort to head off litigation over the impacts of climate change certainly isn’t limited to D.C. – at least 10 states have filed their own related suits. In March, The Wall Street Journal reported that executives from a number of oil companies were urging President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to take steps to insulate them from such lawsuits. And in June, 16 Republican attorneys general asked U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to propose legislation to limit climate-related litigation and create a “liability shield” protecting oil and gas companies.
But targeting D.C. is much easier than any of the states. That's because Congress has ample power to directly interfere in the city's local affairs – almost always through policy riders that are added to must-pass spending bills.
“The fossil fuel industry and its allies are trying to kill any and all lawsuits that would hold Big Oil companies accountable for their climate lies and the damage they’ve caused,” says Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, which tracks such lawsuits. “This assault on D.C.’s ability to enforce its own consumer protection laws is part of their playbook.”
Mark Rodeffer of the D.C. chapter of the Sierra Club argues that congressional lawmakers “had to be tipped off to this by some lobbyist for fossil fuels.”
We reached out to ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP for comment but didn’t hear back. The House Appropriations Committee similarly did not respond to our questions about who pushed for the rider to be included in the spending bill, which still requires approval by the full House and Senate. (It’s worth noting that these riders can and do often change before passage.)
This also isn’t the only approach that House Republicans have used to try to upend D.C.’s litigation. Over the last two years, they have similarly included a separate rider targeting the local law that restricts SLAPP lawsuits (such suits are often filed by large companies and seek to censor or intimidate critics).
Soon after D.C. sued five years ago, the four oil companies tried to turn the city’s anti-SLAPP law against it, claiming the lawsuit was nothing more than a means to silence their free speech. The D.C. Council passed a bill clarifying that the anti-SLAPP law can’t be used against the city, but the rider Republicans have proposed would repeal that. They’ve again tried to include it in this year’s spending bill.
The full slate of D.C.-specific riders proposed by Republicans drew the usual criticism; D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton called them “appalling” and "unsurprising." But even some advocates for D.C. autonomy were surprised by how targeted and specific the new rider is.
“Congress is supposed to legislate for the entire nation. You have floods, people losing health insurance… why does Congress have to look at D.C. lawsuits and exempt individual parties?” asked Ankit Jain, one of D.C.’s two shadow senators. “My hope is this is another exercise in futility where they start with all these riders and we can get them out.”
