{"id":20297,"date":"2026-09-20T11:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T17:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/?p=20297"},"modified":"2026-09-20T11:47:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T17:47:04","slug":"labrador-letter-idaho-families-wont-pay-for-new-yorks-climate-change-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/labrador-letter-idaho-families-wont-pay-for-new-yorks-climate-change-agenda\/","title":{"rendered":"Labrador Letter \u2013 Idaho Families Won\u2019t Pay for New York\u2019s Climate Change Agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dear Friends,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024, New York passed the Climate Change Superfund Act, claiming that the companies producing America\u2019s oil, natural gas, and coal owed the state $75 billion for fuel they produced between 2000 and 2024, and it passed a law to collect. Idaho joined 21 other states to challenge that law, and a federal court has now struck it down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under New York\u2019s Climate Change Superfund Act, any company that extracted fossil fuels or refined oil anywhere in the world during those 25 years \u2013 and that New York decided had accounted for more than a billion tons of emissions \u2013 was strictly liable for a share of a $75 billion fund. Fault did not matter. Where the fuel was produced did not matter. The fact that the fuel production being fined was legal, permitted, and regulated by the EPA did not matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New York benefitted from that fuel production like everyone else. New York residents drove their cars with it, heated their homes with it, and ran their businesses. That fuel production pushed economic growth across all sectors and powered job-creating industries for 25 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Companies do not just absorb a $75 billion demand. It gets built into the price of gasoline, diesel, heating fuel, and every product that moves by truck, and none of that stops at New York\u2019s border. An Idaho family filling up in Nampa or paying a January heating bill in Idaho Falls would have been paying into New York\u2019s climate fund without ever having a vote on it. That is why Idaho joined the coalition. The Trump Administration backed our position in court, and the coal, oil, and natural gas industries filed their own challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The legal problem with the law is simple. Air pollution that crosses state lines has been a question of federal jurisdiction for over a century. The alternative is 50 states writing 50 different rules for the same emissions. Congress wrote the rules in the Clean Air Act and put the EPA in charge, working with the states. New York can regulate what happens inside New York and only New York. It cannot bill the rest of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New York\u2019s response was that it wasn\u2019t regulating anything, only collecting for past harm. Chief Judge Brenda Sannes rejected that argument. She reasoned that when you make a company pay for its emissions, you are regulating those emissions.  Calling it cost recovery does not change what it is. She wrote that the law was \u201csimply beyond the limits of state law.\u201d Because the law also reached producers outside the United States, the court found it stepped into foreign policy, which belongs to the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the first court ruling on a climate superfund law. Vermont has passed one, and our coalition is challenging it too. Other states have bills pending, and each is built on the same idea, that a state can send its bills to people who live somewhere else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My office regularly fights against federal overreach, and keeping Washington, D.C. out of our statutes, wallets, and resources. This fight isn\u2019t any different. We\u2019ll do the same when a state like New York tries to push their radical environmental agenda on Idaho families and force Idahoans to pay a bill they had no part in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Best regards,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Friends, In 2024, New York passed the Climate Change Superfund Act, claiming that the companies producing America\u2019s oil, natural gas, and coal owed the state $75 billion for fuel they produced between 2000 and 2024, and it passed a law to collect. Idaho joined 21 other states to challenge that law, and a federal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":19777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[243],"tags":[327,398],"class_list":["post-20297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions-op-eds","tag-climate-change","tag-environmentalists","cat-243-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20298,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20297\/revisions\/20298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}