State finance officials are pressing President Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to end the Biden-era climate disclosure rules for good, calling them costly ESG mandates that exceed the agency’s limits.
Quick Take
- Seventeen Republican state financial officers asked the SEC to scrap the climate disclosure regime and stop ESG overreach.
- The SEC itself now says the 2024 rules impose major costs that are not justified by the benefit to investors.
- The agency’s rescission analysis says ending the rule could save about $4.9 billion a year.
- The original 2024 rule required many public companies to report climate-related risks and some emissions data.
State Officials Push for a Clean Break
Seventeen state financial officials urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to abandon the climate disclosure rules adopted under the Biden administration. The letter came from officials who oversee public pension and treasury assets, including funds tied to ordinary workers and retirees. Their message was direct: companies should not be forced into costly climate reporting that looks more like political activism than investor protection. The officials argued that those costs are ultimately passed down to shareholders and beneficiaries.
The request lands at a time when the SEC itself is moving in the same direction. In May 2026, the agency proposed rescinding the 2024 climate disclosure rules and said they “impose substantial costs on public companies and their shareholders that are not justified by the informational benefits they may provide to some investors.” That is a major shift from the Biden-era approach, which treated climate reporting as part of the federal securities agenda.
What the Biden-Era Rule Required
The 2024 rule required public companies to include certain climate-related information in registration statements and annual reports. The rule also pushed companies toward more detailed reporting on climate risk, with some disclosures tied to material mitigation or adaptation spending. Supporters portrayed the rule as a way to give investors more comparable data. Critics saw it as another step toward turning the Securities and Exchange Commission into a national climate regulator.
The practical burden was not small. The SEC’s rescission analysis estimates annualized savings of about $4.9 billion if the rule is dropped, with total cost savings of about $7.9 billion at the start. Those figures help explain why many conservative state officials see the rule as a drag on growth, capital formation, and business judgment. They also reinforce a familiar complaint from the right: Washington keeps adding paperwork while families pay higher prices downstream.
Why the Pushback Matters Now
The fight over climate disclosure fits a broader battle over how far federal agencies can go without clear congressional backing. The SEC’s 2026 proposal says the climate rules go beyond the agency’s statutory authority and are not consistent with a registrant-specific, materiality-based approach. That language matters because it goes to the heart of conservative concerns about unelected regulators making policy that should come from elected lawmakers. It also reflects a return to plain investor-focused disclosure.
Investors need more than corporate climate commitments – they need consistent, comparable information about climate-related financial risks.
CATF submitted comments urging the SEC to withdraw its proposal to rescind the Climate-Related Disclosure Rule.https://t.co/kCNU64PGMP
— Clean Air Task Force (@cleanaircatf) August 4, 2026
The move also shows how much the SEC has changed under President Trump. In 2025, the agency said it would stop defending the climate disclosure rule in court, and later it moved toward formal rescission. For supporters of limited government, that is a welcome correction after years of ESG-driven rulemaking. For companies, the shift could mean less compliance cost and less pressure to use federal filings to advance a political agenda.
Sources:
redstate.com, sec.gov, stinson.com, hklaw.com, morganlewis.com, theblaze.com, thecorporatecounsel.net, eelp.law.harvard.edu
