Judge skewers Hochul administration over New York’s climate law delays

By Colin Kinniburgh | New York Focus

This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here.

A judge indicated Friday that he will likely rule that New York is breaking its climate law.

Ulster County Supreme Court Justice Julian Schreibman on Friday skewered a lawyer for the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) who argued that the state could not issue required regulations to cut greenhouse gases any time soon.

“It seems to me that the core of your argument is that we’re living in a time of change and uncertainty, and DEC needs to be given some leeway to accommodate that,” Schreibman said.

“That’s correct, your honor,” replied Meredith Lee-Clark, of the New York State Attorney General’s office, who was representing DEC.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever lived in a time that wasn’t one of change and uncertainty, so I don’t know how that is a governable standard,” the judge continued.

Schreibman went on to say that the most relevant cases in the record “almost compel” him to side with the plaintiffs: four climate justice groups who sued the state for violating its climate law by failing to issue regulations needed to meet it.

However, he suggested that he is unlikely to force the state to take action on the kind of timeline the plaintiffs’ lawyer suggested in the hearing — as little as 30 days to issue draft regulations and 100 days to finalize them.

The four climate groups sued the state in March, following Governor Kathy Hochul’s decision in January to slam the brakes on what was expected to be her signature policy to implement New York’s climate law: cap and invest.

The policy was crafted to meet one of the climate law’s key requirements, namely that the state issue regulations by 2024 to achieve steep emissions cuts starting this decade. Regulators were preparing to issue cap and invest rules, belatedly, at the start of this year, but Hochul unexpectedly shelved them.

In court, her administration argued that the state has been forced to hold off on launching the carbon pricing program — which could reshape the state’s economy — in the face of post-pandemic economic disruption and new resistance from the federal government. Lee-Clark called climate change a “generational problem that DEC is working its hardest to solve” and listed a variety of efforts the state has made to address it, including a new $1 billion fund the governor put in this year’s budget.

Schreibman remained skeptical.

“It’s not my role to give anyone a gold star for how well they’re doing. The issue here is compliance” with the climate law, he said.

Lee-Clark leaned heavily in oral arguments on the federal government’s sharp turn against climate action under President Donald Trump. But that occurred more than a year after DEC’s climate regulations were due, the judge pointed out. He noted that the legislature had had opportunities to revise climate law deadlines, but had chosen not to, and said it was not up to him to grant the agency more time.

“I don’t understand how the agency can just say, ‘We decided that this can’t work right now,’” Schreibman said.

Asked to react to Friday’s hearing, DEC and the attorney general’s office did not immediately respond. DEC has previously said it does not comment on pending litigation.

Rachel Spector, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs at the environmental law group Earthjustice, said she was encouraged by how it went.

“We feel good coming out of the argument,” she said. “The judge, I think, saw that the law is on our side here.”

It’s unclear how strict of an order the judge might impose if he comes down on the plaintiffs’ side. He said it was “highly unlikely” that he would force the state to act before it could appeal the case to a higher court.

If the state were to appeal, the case could drag on for months or more, potentially pushing the fight past Hochul’s reelection bid and as far as 2027 — around the time DEC has suggested that it might be ready to reopen the carbon pricing discussion.

In the hearing, Lee-Clark said the administration was still “committed to creating an economy-wide emissions-reducing system” and suggested it would involve some form of carbon pricing, like cap and invest — but that the details and timeline remained “unclear.”

“As things get messier, it is even more important that DEC is given the time it needs to get things right,” Lee-Clark said, referring to the Trump administration and other headwinds.

Spector said she recognized the obstacles, but noted that one of the key aims of New York’s climate law — passed in 2019, during Trump’s first term — was to set the state out as a leader in a time of federal retrenchment.

“I don’t want to minimize the practical difficulties that the federal administration is creating for climate action. Those are real,” she said. “That doesn’t mean DEC gets to opt out of the state climate law.”