ExxonMobil sues California over climate disclosure laws

Exxon Mobil Corporation is suing the state of California over two 2023 climate disclosure laws that the company says infringe on its free speech rights, including forcing it to embrace the message that big corporations are solely responsible for climate change.

The Texas-based oil and gas company filed its suit Friday in California’s Eastern District Court. He is asking the court to block the laws from taking effect next year.

In its complaint, ExxonMobil says it has publicly disclosed its greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related business risks for years, but it fundamentally disagrees with the state’s new reporting requirements.

The company is expected to use “executives who place disproportionate blame on large corporations like ExxonMobil” in an effort to shame those companies, the complaint says.

Under Senate Bill 253, large companies will have to disclose a wide range of global warming emissions, including direct and indirect emissions such as the costs of employee business travel and product transportation.

ExxonMobil takes issue with the state-required methodology, which would focus on a company’s emissions on a global scale and therefore blame companies simply for their large size and not their efficiency, the complaint says.

The second law, Senate Bill 261, requires companies earning more than $500 million a year to disclose the financial risks climate change poses to their businesses and how they plan to address them.

The company said in its complaint that the law would require it to speculate “about unknowable future developments” and to post such speculation on its website.

A spokesperson for California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office said in an email that it was “truly shocking that one of the largest polluters on the planet would oppose transparency.”