America’s auto state is suing Big Oil
The Trump administration failed to stop Michigan’s new antitrust lawsuit against oil companies.
Imagine, if you will, a parallel universe. The state of Michigan, home of America’s auto industry, is a thriving hub for electric vehicles. They are not “a fringe technology or a luxury alternative,” but rather, “a common sight in every neighborhood — rolling off assembly lines in Flint, parked in driveways in Dearborn, charging outside grocery stores in Grand Rapids, and running quietly down Woodward Avenue.”
That Michigan could have existed by now, a new lawsuit brought by state Attorney General Dana Nessel argues, if four major oil companies and their biggest trade group hadn’t conspired to block it for decades.
The Michigan case, filed last week in federal court, accuses ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute of engaging in a decades-long conspiracy to block the development of clean energy and electric vehicles in order to ensure that their fossil fuel products dominated the market.
The case is distinct from the dozens of other climate deception lawsuits brought by state and local governments against oil and gas giants, arguing that the companies violated state and federal antitrust laws. Acting as a “cartel,” the defendants robbed consumers of energy and transportation choices in “one of the most successful antitrust conspiracies in United States history,” the complaint says.
But Michigan’s lawsuit also represents the Trump administration’s latest failure to quash climate lawsuits against Big Oil. After President Trump last year directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to “take all appropriate action” to stop such suits, the Justice Department preemptively sued Michigan to stop Nessel from filing a lawsuit against fossil fuel companies, as she had pledged to do in 2024. At the time, Nessel called the DOJ lawsuit “arguably sanctionable” and said she was “undeterred” in her “intention to file this lawsuit the President and his Big Oil donors so fear.”
Days after her lawsuit was filed, a federal district court dismissed the Trump administration’s case. U.S. Judge Jane Beckering skewered the DOJ for “fail[ing] to cite any case in which a court has preemptively enjoined a party from bringing a broad swath of unspecified claims against unspecified members of a given industry simply because that party has begun investigating whether a litigation strategy may have merit.”
The DOJ’s lawsuit “represents an escalation in a decades-long series of clashes between state attorneys general and industry groups,” including lead paint, tobacco, and opioids, Beckering wrote.
In a statement Tuesday, Nessel said, “My office will not be bullied, and we will continue to stand up for the people of Michigan, no matter how domineering the interests we face.”
How oil companies stifled their competition
Michigan’s case argues that renewable energy and transportation markets have failed to evolve “not because clean alternatives are not viable, but because Defendants have suppressed the conditions for their otherwise-inevitable deployment and adoption.”
Oil companies purchased solar and EV patents to ensure others couldn’t use them, solicited control of renewable markets and then abandoned them, and funded powerful institutions to promote false solutions, all while using trade groups to downplay the harms of fossil fuels, according to the complaint.
The alleged conspiracy began after 1979, when Exxon’s internal research concluded that renewable energy would need to account for at least 50% of the energy supplied worldwide by 2010 in order to maintain planetary warming at “a relatively safe level.” Instead of competing to develop clean energy technologies, the companies coordinated to thwart them under the “CO2 and Climate Task Force,” a group established by the American Petroleum Institute, Michigan alleges.
The Task Force was used to share information among the companies, who began what Michigan’s complaint calls a “capture-and-kill” strategy of buying up solar and electric vehicle patents and then allowing them to lapse.
Exxon, for example, obtained key patents for developing public charging stations for EVs — but never used them. After developing the first hybrid vehicle prototype, the oil giant abandoned its cutting-edge EV and solar technology research and ventures in the early 1980s. The other defendants similarly retreated in concert from their EV and solar innovations, and used patent litigation against their rivals to “deter new market entrants” from deploying the technology.
The companies went on to run advertising and lobbying campaigns attacking EVs, and falsely promoted themselves as leading the energy transition while instead pushing for technologies that they knew would continue to bolster fossil fuels, other reports show.
Michigan’s lawsuit is also the first to include reference to an elaborate hack-for-hire ring that targeted climate activists as part of the alleged conspiracy. The hacking scheme has been linked to DCI Group, Exxon’s longtime lobbying group, and is under investigation by federal prosecutors.
The defendants restrained the energy transition, “raised prices for Michigan consumers, and caused the United States to fall behind China and other foreign markets,” the lawsuit says.
Nessel’s case taps into the national political conversation about affordability by directly attacking the narrative that fossil fuel-derived energy is “affordable” energy. “Michigan is facing an energy affordability crisis as our home energy costs skyrocket and consumers are left without affordable options for transportation,” Nessel told the New York Times. “These out-of-control costs are not the result of natural economic inflation, but due to the greed of these corporations who prioritized their own profit and marketplace dominance over competition and consumer savings.”
An “inflection point” for climate lawsuits
Michigan was the first of eleven states with climate lawsuits against the oil industry to include antitrust claims. Other lawsuits brought by Puerto Rico municipalities included antitrust claims, but they were dismissed last year after a judge ruled they were time-barred by statute of limitation requirements. Plaintiffs in those cases have appealed.
Michigan’s lawsuit goes into significant detail about the alleged antitrust violations, said Aaron Rugenberg, a lawyer and director of Public Citizen’s Climate Accountability Project. “It’s an extremely effective and precise way to describe the fossil fuel industry’s campaign of climate denial, and its ongoing strategies to block the clean energy transition,” he said. “I think it could be a real inflection point in the fight for climate accountability.”
Some other defendants in recent antitrust lawsuits include New Jersey landlords accused of colluding to raise rents, Tyson Foods, accused of price-fixing beef and pork, and tech giants accused of monopolistic behavior.
“These are powerful laws,” said Rugenberg. “Now people are starting to apply them to this vast conspiracy that we’re all living the consequences of. In the United States, these big oil corporations have incredible anti-competitive sway.”
Ryan Meyers, senior vice president and general counsel for API, told outlets that the lawsuits were a “coordinated campaign against an industry that powers everyday life, drives America’s economy, and is actively reducing emissions,” despite evidence that fossil fuel emissions are on the rise. “This lawsuit also ignores the fact that Michigan is highly dependent on oil and gas to support the state’s automakers and workers,” Chevron’s lawyer, Ted Boutrous of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, told the New York Times.
Elise Otten, a spokeswoman for Exxon, told outlets that “This is yet another legally incoherent effort to regulate by lawsuit.”
According to Exxon assistant general counsel Justin Anderson, the lawsuits are “a problem” for the industry. The company has a petition pending before the Supreme Court in one of the lawsuits, brought by Boulder, Colorado, to intervene in the cases and toss them out.
An escalating effort to kill the cases
Oil companies and their allies have ramped up efforts to shut down climate lawsuits over the past year. As new cases are filed and others continue to move toward trial, the industry is escalating its push for Congress to grant it complete legal immunity from climate lawsuits. A new agenda from the American Petroleum Institute, a defendant in Michigan’s lawsuit and many others, listed “protect[ing]” oil companies from “abusive state climate lawsuits” as a top policy priority for 2026.
That could become the primary strategy for the industry if the Trump DOJ’s efforts continue to fail. Hawaiʻi, the other state to be sued by the DOJ for a planned climate lawsuit, filed its case against oil companies the following day. The DOJ’s lawsuit against the state is still pending.
The DOJ’s loss in Michigan is a reminder that the will of the Trump administration and the oil industry is not a final decree, said Rugenberg: “Sometimes, what the law is can still matter.”
I don’t think oil companies will be too worried if they choose to stop supplying their products to Michigan retailers.