Minnesota Should Have Its Day In Court With Big Oil [OPINION]

By Leigh Currie, Minnesota Reformer

May 20, 2026

The Trump administration’s assault on the rights of Minnesotans has found a new target: Our right to hold corporations accountable in Minnesota courts when they violate Minnesota’s laws.

For six years, Attorney General Keith Ellison has been fighting on our behalf to hold accountable three Goliaths of the oil and gas industry — Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries and the American Petroleum Institute — to make them pay for a decades-long campaign to deceive consumers about how their products are fueling the climate crisis.

After years of Big Oil’s delay tactics, the Minnesota Supreme Court at last ruled that Minnesota’s case could move toward trial and into the discovery phase, during which the state has an opportunity to uncover additional evidence of the companies’ long-running climate deception campaign.

But President Trump and his Big Oil benefactors, who are now raking in tremendous profits at the pump while we pay the price for intensifying damages from climate change, don’t want the people of Minnesota to have our day in court.

Last year, Trump ordered the Justice Department to take “all appropriate action to stop” cases like Minnesota’s from going forward, for fear that the companies could be liable for “crippling damages.”

And just last week, Trump’s Justice Department took their marching orders and sued Minnesota in an effort to block the state’s case from moving forward, calling it “woke” and “unconstitutional.” One legal expert has called the Trump administration’s case as “worthy of four Pinocchio’s, if not an SNL skit” and Ellison has rightly described it as “frivolous and meritless” and said his office plans to move to dismiss it promptly.

This action from the Trump administration is an attempt to keep our taxpayers shouldering the climate costs that Big Oil companies racked up, while blocking our state from having its day in court. According to Minnesota’s lawsuit, Exxon worked with Koch and API to deceive the public about the climate harms of fossil fuels, promoting uncertainty around climate science while internally predicting the climate chaos we’re currently experiencing with shocking accuracy.

Lying to Minnesotans about the dangers of a product in order to sell more of it is illegal, and we deserve to hold the defendants accountable in court. Yet here is the Trump administration, filing a Hail Mary lawsuit to block our state from enforcing our own laws and shield the fossil fuel industry from facing the consequences of their actions.

Notably, the Trump administration has already tried suing two other states, Michigan and Hawaii, to stop similar climate lawsuits against oil companies — and both of those efforts were tossed by federal judges. This third effort is just another attempt to prioritize the fossil fuel industry over everyday Americans who are shouldering the impacts of the climate crisis.

Oil CEOs met with Trump a year ago to raise their concerns over the wave of climate accountability lawsuits being filed by communities, including Minnesota. Fossil fuel lobbyists have openly been pushing for a legal liability shield from Congress and the Trump administration ever since, and their allies are rising to the call.

Last month, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyoming, introduced federal bills that aim to block laws and lawsuits aiming to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for any climate-related wrongdoing, ever. If those bills become law, not only would Minnesota and dozens of other communities’ climate accountability lawsuits be stopped in their tracks, but Big Oil would be put above the law. U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, Republican of Minnesota’s 8th District, is co-sponsoring one of the bills that would block his own constituents’ access to climate accountability.

Minnesota should be allowed to present the evidence of Big Oil’s deception in court. If these companies are as innocent as they claim to be, they don’t need to rewrite the rules — they just need to prove that in court.

The Minnesota Reformer is an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to keeping Minnesotans informed and unearthing stories other outlets can’t or won’t tell..