California AG pledges more lawsuits against Trump's green rollbacks, oil companies

By Valerie Volcovici and Sheila Dang

Sept 24 (Reuters) - California Attorney General Rob Bonta said on Wednesday his state would continue to sue the Trump administration's aggressive deregulatory actions on environmental rules, and was also looking at more lawsuits connected to deception around plastic recycling.

Speaking on the "Climate Frontlines" show live from Times Square during New York Climate Week, Bonta told Reuters: "Each and every time they violate the law, they hurt my state, my people, we will sue them, we will take them to court."

"So far that’s meant more than one a week. We definitely have more lawsuits planned," he said.

California's broader strategy is to counter the administration's push to expand fossil fuels and its sidelining of climate science that underpins its rapid-fire environmental policy rollbacks.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job” in the world, doubling down on his skepticism of mainstream climate science and his opposition to renewable energy.

"We're looking at the many actions that are being taken to sort of adopt this pro-fossil fuel 'head-in-the-sand' when it comes to climate change and climate science, a position that results in a lot of rollbacks of positions of the Biden administration that we believe were sound," Bonta told Reuters in a separate interview.

This involves focusing on federal agencies' potential violations of the Administrative Procedure Act.

Earlier this week, Bonta co-led a coalition of 23 attorneys general and seven counties and cities in a joint letter opposing the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rescission of its 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public's health, the underpinning of federal greenhouse gas regulations.

The public comment period on the rescission ended on Monday and the EPA could issue a final rule later this year, opening the agency up to lawsuits.

Asked whether California would sue the administration over the rescission, knowing that the case could end up in the Supreme Court, which has recently favored the Trump administration on major environmental cases, Bonta said his office will weigh the risks. If the Supreme Court upholds the rescission, it could make it harder for a future administration to take on a new endangerment finding.

"We want to stop unlawful actions that we think that we have a strong chance, based on the facts and the law, to stop. Sometimes that does mean going to federal court, with the very possibility that we can go to intermediate appellate court and then U.S. Supreme Court," he said.

EXXON JUDGMENT DAY

Bonta also said the state will keep its focus on major fossil fuel companies and more lawsuits related to plastic recycling.

"We are looking more broadly at the myth of plastic recycling. ... We are looking at the possibility of another lawsuit," he said during the Climate Frontlines show.

In September 2024, Bonta sued Exxon Mobil XOM.N, the largest U.S. oil producer, for what he alleged was a decades-long campaign to deceive consumers about the recyclability of plastic products and cover up a reality that minimal amounts of plastic waste in the U.S. are recycled.

In January, Exxon filed its own lawsuit against Bonta, accusing him of defaming and disparaging the company's advanced plastic recycling initiatives, as well as alleging he had a connection to one of the company's competitors.

Bonta said in the separate interview with Reuters that he believed Exxon was seeking to delay "judgment day" in the legal process, which was still in its early stage.

"We sued with a lot of investigatory material behind us," he said. "We think it's very strong and we think we're going to prevail."

Bonta declined to comment on whether there were settlement discussions in either lawsuit.

"We won’t stand for a defamatory campaign about our advanced recycling technology — a technology that has processed more than 100 million pounds of plastic waste that would otherwise have been burned or buried," an Exxon spokesperson said in a statement.

PROCESSED FOODS

Bonta also identified ultra-processed foods, which have come under fire in recent months over claims many popular packaged food products have been engineered to addict people, as an "issue of great interest" for his office but declined to comment on any pending investigations.

Researchers have considered many packaged snack foods, sweets and soft drinks made with substances extracted from whole foods or synthesized artificially, as ultra-processed. The products have been targeted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr as a contributor to childhood obesity and other health problems.

"Ultra-processed foods are a problem, there’s no doubt about it,” Bonta said. “But I think there is really sound science on this, that’s where we start, with the facts and the science and go from there.”