President Trump has made consumer choice a centerpiece of his second term in the White House, declaring within hours of taking office that the policy of the United States Government would be “to safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances, including but not limited to lightbulbs, dishwashers, washing machines, gas stoves, water heaters, toilets, and shower heads.”
This represents a dramatic shift from the war on household appliances and traditional gas-powered cars under the Biden Administration, which we highlighted at Alliance For Consumers in our Biden Dream House and Biden Dream Garage campaigns.
Consumers have been crying out for relief from the endless assault on their ability to buy their preferred household appliances, as opposed to only the ones preferred by the friends and constituents of officials like Nancy Pelosi. The last thing consumers wanted was the federal government wiping the majority of the current washing machines or freezers off the market, much less an assault on gas stoves and traditional gas vehicles. Most of us know that life is simply better when consumers in coastal enclaves can buy an expensive electric car alongside a pricey induction stove and a dishwasher that takes three hours, while everyday consumers in the rest of America have the option of buying a traditional car, gas stove, and a dishwasher that works.
But there is a real, ongoing threat to Washington’s new consumer agenda lingering in the states, and it runs a risk of allowing left-wing activists to once more reach into kitchens, bathrooms, and garages nationwide and dictate what products are available to consumers far from the coastal enclaves where left-wing elites usually congregate.
The threat lies in the ongoing series of public nuisance lawsuits over climate change that far-left local governments and activists are pushing in state courts in places like Oregon, Maryland, and California.
Activist groups have in recent years been increasingly turning to public-nuisance lawsuits to impose policies that they’ve failed to persuade lawmakers to enact in the halls of Congress, or even in state legislatures. The list of industries under assault is long and growing, ranging from firearm manufacturers to beverage companies that dare to sell plastic bottles. But perhaps the most dangerous set of cases are those that attempt to impose liability on disfavored industries for global climate change.
These climate change cases are particularly dangerous because they typically feature a county or city claiming that global climate change has caused them billions of dollars of damage and then asking for a court order that will force energy company defendants to undo the effects of climate change—“abate the nuisance,” in the lingo of the lawsuits—by not only handing over billions for left-wing policy priorities, but also changing behavior nationwide and conforming to left-wing energy policy. Take note, these cases aren’t like what we see when New York or California try to ban oil and gas activity or the use of gas-powered cars within their own boundaries. These lawsuits are an organized effort to effectively ban disfavored products and activities all across the country, under the premise that any carbon production anywhere in America increases global climate change and affects the plaintiff city or county.
States across the country have raised the alarm that these lawsuits represent a grave threat to their ability to protect their own consumers and govern within their own boundaries. And I have written for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy about how these cases represent perhaps the greatest single ongoing threat to States’ Rights and Equal Sovereignty.
But with President Trump once more moving into the White House, these cases have taken on a new dimension, because they are a ticket for left-wing activists to nullify the pro-consumer agenda flowing out of the United States Government. It will matter very little if federal agencies prioritize consumer choice, roll back the de facto bans on gas-powered cars, and stop the effort to wipe countless household appliances off store shelves, if underneath all of that we see companies forced to shut down operations, ban their own products, and comply with a left-wing worldview because of a court order or binding settlement in a public nuisance climate lawsuit.
Make no mistake, the new agenda in Washington is fantastic news for consumers, who finally have some hope that the war on commonsense and everyday goods is coming to an end. It is important to celebrate the wins for consumers in Washington. But, in order for those wins to be lasting, the left’s climate change lawfare must be defeated, including through the full deployment of the United States Department of Justice. Otherwise the wins we are seeing now will be short-lived.
O.H. Skinner is executive director of Alliance For Consumers and a former solicitor general of Arizona.
