A federal judge has permanently barred New York from enforcing its Climate Change Superfund Act, ruling that the state’s attempt to bill fossil-fuel companies $75 billion for climate-related infrastructure costs runs headlong into federal authority.
U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel granted summary judgment Wednesday to the Trump administration, which had sued New York in May 2025 over the 2024 law. Castel found the statute preempted by federal law on two separate grounds and issued a permanent injunction, not a temporary hold, against state officials enforcing it.
The law had set up a $75 billion fund financed not by taxpayers but by fossil-fuel extractors and refiners found responsible for more than one billion tons of covered greenhouse-gas emissions between 2000 and 2024. Crucially, the calculation wasn’t limited to New York, or even the United States — it counted emissions tied to a company’s products anywhere in the world.
Two Grounds for Preemption
Castel first concluded the law is preempted by the federal Clean Air Act. New York had argued the statute doesn’t regulate emissions directly — it merely makes companies pay for damage caused by past emissions. Castel rejected that framing, pointing to the 2nd Circuit’s ruling in City of New York v. Chevron, which held that imposing monetary liability tied to greenhouse-gas emissions can itself function as regulation. Because interstate greenhouse-gas regulation demands a single national standard rather than a state-by-state patchwork, New York’s law couldn’t stand.
He also rejected the argument that the EPA’s recent rescission of its greenhouse-gas
