Republican Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman introduced a bill Friday seeking to safeguard American energy from “leftist legal crusades punishing lawful activity.”
The legislation, dubbed the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act, would prevent “retroactive climate liability lawsuits” and other proceedings to implement or enforce an energy penalty law and also dismiss pending lawsuits and proceedings beginning on the date of the bill’s enactment, according to a news release. Hageman’s bill would also void state energy penalty laws and affirm that the federal government possesses the sole authority and jurisdiction to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and other interstate environmental standards. (RELATED: Energy Giants Walk Away From Supreme Court With Big Win)
“Energy security is national security, and we will not self-sabotage our critical industries with a cascade of costly lawsuits and extreme penalties that jeopardize American drilling,” Hageman said in a statement.
“America’s energy producers should be protected from the dangerous legal precedent that would be set by the retroactive punishment of lawful activity,” she continued.
Energy security is national security, and will not self-sabotage our critical industries with a cascade of costly lawsuits and extreme penalties that jeopardize American drilling.
I introduced the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026 to protect American energy from leftist legal…
— Rep. Harriet Hageman (@RepHageman) April 17, 2026
American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers President and CEO Chet Thompson and American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Mike Sommers in a joint statement released on Thursday said that they are thankful for Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Hageman for “introducing legislation to stop a growing patchwork of state laws and lawsuits that threaten American energy and risk raising costs for consumers.”
“These efforts to retroactively penalize companies for lawfully meeting consumer demand are misguided and counterproductive,” Thompson and Sommers added. “Congress should act decisively to reaffirm federal authority over national energy policy and end this activist-driven state overreach.”
In April 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order aiming to “protect American energy from state overreach.” Trump wrote in the order that many U.S. states “have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security.”
In recent years, several states have introduced “polluters pay” legislation, also referred to as climate “superfund” bills, which sometimes requires large fossil fuel companies to pay fees for damages linked to greenhouse gas emissions. Critics of climate litigation and “polluters pay” laws have contended that such measures could hinder energy production, ultimately driving up costs for consumers, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported.
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