Anti-Oil Bill Fails Again, but California’s Lawsuit Industry Never Sleeps

CIPA members received welcome news this week when Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 982, the latest iteration of the so-called “polluters pay” campaign, failed to advance out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. According to current reporting, the bill fell short on a 6-2 vote on April 14, with five committee members not voting, leaving Wiener once again unable to push this legally dubious measure through its first major hurdle.

SB 982 would authorize the California Attorney General to sue specified fossil fuel companies for so-called “climate-attributable” damages tied to insurance costs, FAIR Plan losses, and related financial impacts. The April 6 amended version also sought to impose strict liability, use market-share and alternate-liability theories to assign blame, and prohibit companies from passing litigation-related costs through fuel prices. In plain English, it was another attempt to turn California’s insurance crisis into a political weapon against the oil and natural gas industry.

This was not Senator Wiener’s first run at the same basic scheme. Last year’s similar effort also died in Senate Judiciary, and this year’s version was narrowed to let only the Attorney General, not private plaintiffs, bring the lawsuits. Even with that change, the bill still ran into the same brick wall: serious concerns about cost, constitutionality, and the real-world consequences of using California families and employers as collateral damage in a war on affordable energy.

Opposition to SB 982 was broad and telling. Critics reportedly included not only oil and gas interests and statewide business organizations, but also labor unions that understood the obvious: bills like this do not punish some mythical corporate abstraction. They boomerang back onto working Californians through higher energy costs, greater economic uncertainty, and yet another signal that California policymakers are determined to litigate their way out of every problem except the ones they actually created.

That said, this bill is not technically dead. It was granted reconsideration, which means Wiener can try to bring it back later this session. Last year, a similar bill also received reconsideration yet never returned for another vote. As of the current legislative record, SB 982 remains an active bill in the committee process, with the official bill history still showing it in the Senate after its April 6 amendments and rereferral to Judiciary. In other words, the Capitol’s bad ideas often die like vampires, not like men. Always check for a pulse.

For CIPA members, the larger lesson is clear. Efforts to scapegoat California’s in-state energy producers for the state’s insurance market failures are not going away. These proposals are part of a continuing campaign to punish lawful producers, weaponize retroactive liability theories, and hand more power to politicians and trial lawyers at the expense of affordability, investment, and domestic energy security. SB 982 may have stalled, but the ideology behind it is alive and well in Sacramento, and industry must remain vigilant.