Hawaii imports nearly all its oil but is suing the energy industry for climate damages, and those suits raise serious questions about selective targeting, judicial entanglements and partisan politics; this piece examines who was left out of the cases, how other courts have handled similar claims, and why ties between the bench and climate advocacy groups matter for fairness and federal law.
The islands rely on imported fuel to keep lights on, jets flying and tourists moving from spot to spot, yet local leaders have launched sweeping litigation against oil and gas companies for climate-related harms. That push looks less like a neutral legal effort and more like a political campaign dressed up as law. From a Republican perspective, the suits feel like a regulatory end-run by Democratic officials trying to impose statewide policy through the courts.
Hawaii’s attorney general Anne Lopez, along with Honolulu and Maui officials, are seeking huge sums from the energy industry on the theory that corporate emissions have damaged the island environment. Those are big, headline-grabbing claims that have real consequences for families and businesses that pay for fuel and electricity. The lawsuits also invite scrutiny because they single out certain players while sparing others.
Notably, the complaints exclude the state’s only refinery and a major supplier, Par Pacific and its Par Hawaii subsidiary, even though those companies supply gasoline and jet fuel to the islands. Executives tied to those businesses have donated to state Democratic leaders, including Gov. Josh Green, which throws cold water on any suggestion of even-handed enforcement. Under the plaintiffs’ logic, however, it’s the in-state energy refiners and end users whose emissions are supposed to cause the most harm to local communities.
Courts in other Democratic states have repeatedly tossed identical claims, pointing to established precedent that federal law governs interstate and international emissions policy. Those decisions underline a basic constitutional reality: national policy on emissions and commerce belongs in federal hands, not in a patchwork of local jury trials. Allowing state-level shakedowns would upend settled legal limits and invite endless, costly litigation against energy companies everywhere.
CLIMATE JUSTICE GROUP HAS DEEP TIES TO JUDGES, EXPERTS INVOLVED IN LITIGATION AMID CLAIMS OF IMPARTIALITY
The integrity of Hawaii’s courts is in question because prominent judges have interacted closely with the Environmental Law Institute and its Climate Judiciary Project, groups that maintain relationships with the very law firms pressing these lawsuits. Those ties include shared staff and donors linked to Sher Edling LLP, the plaintiffs’ firm representing Honolulu and other local governments. When judges, their clerks and experts operate in overlapping networks with advocacy groups, the public’s trust in impartial decision-making erodes.
One concerning detail: Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald reportedly directed a clerk to assist an expert working on the climate cases to understand the Daubert standard “used by judges to assess an expert witness’s scientific testimony” and had previously given a “helpful” primer to Kerry Emmanuel, an expert retained by climate plaintiffs in another case. Three justices attended ELI-CLP sponsored events, which raises predictable questions about whether the court can be truly neutral when hearing high-stakes claims against industry.
Chief Justice Recktenwald wrote the Hawaii Supreme Court opinion that handed a significant victory to the climate plaintiffs in the Honolulu case, while a concurrence went further and suggested the U.S. Supreme Court should reach the same result regardless of federal statutory text because the Court “could use a little Aloha.” That kind of rhetoric reads less like sober legal analysis and more like a political posture, and it fuels calls for closer inspection of how these cases are being steered.
The mix of selective defendants, partisan financing and cozy advocacy relationships points to a larger problem: state courts being used to pursue policy goals that belong at the federal level. For those concerned about fair process and constitutional allocation of authority, the logical response is federal review and clear pre-emption to prevent local leaders from rewriting national energy policy via litigation. Absent that check, the pattern in Hawaii could spread and threaten predictable rules for energy and commerce nationwide.
