Big Oil is quietly paying state legal officials
Our best attempt at visually depicting a shadowy pollution-laden effort to influence U.S. courts. Look, we’re not illustrators, OK? Source: Getty Images.
Honolulu's climate lawsuit is an existential threat to Big Oil. So they’re buying Republican attorneys general to defend them in court.
by ARIELLE SAMUELSON and EMILY ATKIN
At the Society of Environmental Journalists conference this year, we heard about a promising legal case that experts believe actually has a real shot at holding the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change.
City & County of Honolulu v. Sunoco LP is the first climate liability lawsuit against fossil fuel companies to be greenlit for trial, expected later this year. In it, Honolulu accuses several oil and gas giants of misleading its citizens about the environmental consequences of fossil fuels for decades, and seeks financial compensation for past, present, and future damages to the region.
As a trial comes closer, however, we learned that the lawsuit is facing more and more serious obstacles. Most notably, last week, a plethora of fossil fuel-funded groups–including the American Petroleum Institute–filed petitions asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and stop the trial from moving forward.
In addition, a whopping 20 Republican state attorneys general also filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to do the same. So it’s not just industry groups: nearly half of the country’s chief legal officers are asking the nation’s top court to intervene in a local government’s climate lawsuit.
How did this happen? If you only read Fox, or other conservative news, you’d likely believe that these state attorneys general were acting on behalf of their citizens, out of deep legal concern they all just so happened to share.
But this is not the whole story. In reality, the state AG petition is part of the organized effort by the fossil fuel industry to kill all formal efforts to hold corporations accountable for the climate crisis—both in the litigation space, and beyond.
RAGA: A legal group fueled by oil and gas
To understand how these 20 state attorneys general are connected to the fossil fuel industry, you first must understand The Republican Attorneys General Association, known as RAGA.
“RAGA is a pay to play group,” says Lisa Graves, the executive director of the watchdog group True North Research. “It was created to allow industries to wash money into RAGA, which RAGA then uses to fuel the election campaigns and ambitions of AGs.”
RAGA’s name is not on the Hawaii brief, and beyond its official X account posting a news story about it, it has not publicly admitted its involvement. But the self-described group of “conservative fighters,” which includes 28 Republican attorneys general among its members, has endorsed every single attorney general involved.
According to research by HEATED and the Center for Media and Democracy, all 20 state attorneys general that signed the amicus brief are not only featured on RAGA’s website, but many were elected with RAGA’s help. The lead counsel for the amicus brief, Alabama attorney general Steve Marshall, was the organization’s chair in 2023. Three attorneys general have served on RAGA’s executive committee (Indiana, Mississippi, and Utah), and five have been chairs or vice chairs (Alabama, Georgia, Montana, South Carolina, and Utah). At least six AGs won their elections with the support and funding of RAGA, including the attorneys general from Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, Louisiana, Iowa, and Idaho. In a statement last year, RAGA celebrated “a 100 percent success rate for RAGA in the 2023 election cycle.” This included the election of Louisiana AG Liz Murrill, which the organization supported with “a substantial, statewide paid advertising campaign.”
“These AGs, their political futures are underwritten by RAGA,” Graves said. “And who underwrites RAGA? The fossil fuel industry, along with Leonard Leo.”
RAGA did not respond to our requests for comment; when HEATED called executive director Pete Bisbee, he said he doesn’t speak to journalists, referred us to a spokesperson, and hung up. (Bisbee has previously been under fire leading the organization that paid for robocalls encouraging former President Trump supporters to protest the election results at the Capitol on Jan 6.)
But public statements, donations, and recordings of private meetings reveal RAGA’s deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. In 2023 alone, RAGA received more than $15 million in donations, and more than $1 million of those contributions came from the fossil fuel industry, according to HEATED’s analysis of IRS tax forms. Over the last decade, RAGA has accepted more than $10 million from fossil fuel companies, electric utilities, and industry trade groups.
Among RAGA’s donors are Koch Industries, Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, the American Petroleum Institute, and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM)—and these donors have pushed AGs to adopt an aggressive anti-climate strategy.
How RAGA connects fossil fuel companies to AGs
To connect AGs with the priorities of donors, RAGA offers different tiers of access for different amounts of donations. “It’s not technically money laundering, but it has that appearance,” Graves said.