California Climate Disclosure Rules Survive Significant Early Challenge

On November 5, a federal district court judge in California denied plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment in a facial challenge to California's climate disclosure laws. Although this ruling is relatively limited in scope--it merely held that the First Amendment aspect of the challenge to the climate disclosure laws required a full factual record before issuing a decision, and specifically permitted this legal line of attack to be raised again later--it is nonetheless significant. A court held that climate disclosure laws did not constitute a per se violation of the First Amendment, a ruling that offers support for their continued utility and viability.

Specifically, the California climate disclosure laws at issue--S.B. 253 and S.B. 261--require companies that do business in California and have more than $500 million in annual revenue to disclose "two categories of climate-related financial risk information," and further require that companies doing business in