Hageman’s announcement “confirms that the fossil fuel industry is escalating its effort to avoid accountability,” said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director of the Make Polluters Pay campaign. She and other climate advocates say this escalation suggests the industry is guilty of the wrongdoing it is accused of.
“If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t need immunity,” Iyla Shornstein, political director at the Center for Climate Integrity, an organization supporting climate-accountability initiatives, told Inside Climate News. “It’s a crucial moment for lawmakers who care about accountability and justice to speak out and oppose these efforts.”
Nearly 200 advocacy groups sent a letter last year to Democratic leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), urging them to “draw a line in the sand” and unite their caucuses in opposing any efforts in Congress to shield climate polluters from legal consequences. The Center for Climate Integrity said the letter received no response. Neither the offices of Schumer nor Jeffries responded to inquiries from Inside Climate News.
In 2020, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland led a coalition of 60 House Democrats in a letter opposing a previous attempt by the oil and gas industry to secure legal immunity through draft legislation in Congress.
“Fossil fuel companies are apparently continuing to lobby for legislation that would absolve them of any accountability for their role in endangering people’s health and safety. We rejected these efforts in 2020 and will continue to defeat them if they are proposed in the future,” a spokesperson for the House Judiciary Democrats and Raskin, the ranking member, told Inside Climate News in an emailed statement.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who along with Raskin released a joint staff report in 2024 on the industry’s “campaign of deception, disinformation, and doublespeak” to block climate action, told Inside Climate News that he “hasn’t seen any such legislation.”