www.thecentersquare.com – By David Beasley | The Center Square contributor – (The Center Square – ) 2025-05-28 16:06:00
A South Carolina judge will hear arguments on whether to dismiss Charleston’s 2020 climate-change lawsuit against 24 oil and gas companies accused of causing global warming by selling fossil fuels. The lawsuit claims these companies knew for over 50 years their products would worsen flooding but hid the truth for profit. Charleston seeks monetary damages. The case was moved back to state court after Chevron requested federal jurisdiction. President Trump issued an executive order opposing such state lawsuits, citing energy cost impacts and federalism concerns. Despite this, climate lawsuits are expected to increase, especially among left-leaning municipalities backed by law firms willing to work pro bono.
(The Center Square) – A South Carolina judge is scheduled to hear arguments Thursday and Friday on whether to dismiss a climate-change lawsuit by the city of Charleston against 24 oil and gas companies.
In the lawsuit filed in 2020, the city said the companies contributed to greenhouse gas pollution, global warming, and climate change by selling fossil fuel products.
“As this lawsuit shows, these companies have known for more than 50 years that their products were going to cause the worst flooding the world has seen since Noah built the Ark,” then mayor John Tecklenburg said in a statement when the lawsuit was filed. “And instead of warning us, they covered up the truth and turned our flooding problems into their profits. That was wrong, and this lawsuit is all about holding them accountable for that multi-decade campaign of deception.”
The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages.
Charleston’s lawsuit is one of 20 filed nationwide by state and local governments against oil companies, according to federal court records.
Two of the defendants in the Charleston case, Chevron Corp. and Chevron U.S.A. Inc., tried to have the case tried in federal court. But U.S. District Court Judge Richard Mark Gergel in 2023 moved it back to state court.
On April 8, President Donald Trump issued an executive order instructing the U.S. attorney general to take action to stop state climate change lawsuits against oil companies.
“These state laws and policies weaken our national security and devastate Americans by driving up energy costs for families coast-to-coast, despite some of these families not living or voting in states with these crippling policies,” the executive order states. “These laws and policies also undermine federalism by projecting the regulatory preferences of a few states into all states. Americans must be permitted to heat their homes, fuel their cars, and have peace of mind – free from policies that make energy more expensive and inevitably degrade quality of life.”
The Center Square was unsuccessful before publication getting comment from Charleston Mayor William Cogswell.
South Carolina Circuit Court Judge William Young is scheduled to hear arguments Thursday and Friday on the oil companies’ motion to dismiss the Charleston lawsuit.
Regardless of the ruling in the South Carolina case and Trump’s executive order, these types of lawsuits aren’t likely to go away anytime soon, Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told The Center Square.
“I think the trajectory of the climate lawsuits is probably going to increase,” Isacc said. “As long as we have leftist elected municipalities in states who recognize there is a law firm out there that will do this for them for free, I think you are going to continue to have people take the hook.”
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Right
The article largely reports on the lawsuit and related political actions in a factual manner, citing statements from involved parties and officials without overt editorializing. However, the inclusion of language such as quoting President Trump’s executive order criticizing state climate lawsuits for raising energy costs and the choice of a source like Jason Isaac of the American Energy Institute—who uses the phrase “leftist elected municipalities”—introduces framing that leans toward a center-right perspective. The article highlights arguments against the climate change lawsuits and stresses concerns about economic and regulatory impacts, which are common themes in center-right discourse. Therefore, while the article presents information on both sides, the selection and framing of quotes suggest a subtle center-right bias rather than a fully neutral stance.
www.thecentersquare.com – By David Beasley | The Center Square contributor – (The Center Square – ) 2025-05-29 14:50:00
The city of Charleston sued 24 oil and gas companies in 2020, claiming they contributed to climate change by selling fossil fuels and seeking monetary damages for costs like sea walls. Defense attorneys argued the case should be dismissed, saying global warming is a political, not judicial issue, and that regulating emissions across states violates the U.S. Constitution’s federal system. South Carolina’s attorney general’s office supports dismissal. Charleston’s lawyers compared the case to tobacco and opioid lawsuits, saying companies hid climate risks and shifted costs to taxpayers. The companies countered that most emissions occur outside South Carolina and the U.S. The hearing continues Friday.
(The Center Square) – A climate-change lawsuit by the city of Charleston against 24 oil and gas companies should be dismissed because global warming “is not an issue for courts to decide,” an attorney for the companies argued Thursday.
“It’s a scientific policy issue that should be decided by the political branches: the executive branch and Congress,” Chevron attorney Ted Boutrous told South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Roger Young in a hearing. “A string of cases from state courts and federal courts require dismissal.”
The office of South Carolina’s attorney general agrees.
“The state agrees entirely with the defense position here that their motion to dismiss should be granted entirely on the merits,” Ben McGray, assistant deputy solicitor with the South Carolina attorney general’s office, told the judge Thursday.
The U.S. Constitution prohibits one state from dictating or regulating conduct in another state, Gray said.
“Allowing the plantiffs’ claims to go forward, would this violate the equal dignity that is afforded each state in the union,” Gray said. “That’s inherent in our federal system.”
In the lawsuit filed in 2020, Charleston claimed the companies contributed to greenhouse gas pollution, global warming, and climate change by selling fossil fuel products.
In the lawsuit, Charleston seeks unspecified monetary damages from the oil and gas companies.
Attorneys for Charleston argued Thursday that the oil and gas companies knew that their products contributed to climate change but kept that from the public.
Vic Sher, one of Charleston’s attorneys, compared the Charleston climate change case to tobacco, opioid lawsuits and asbestos lawsuits.
Sher said as a result of climate change, Charleston will have to spend billions of dollars to construct sea walls and other mitigation measures. The lawsuit does not seek to dictate how other states handle climate change.
“It is about the money,” the attorney told the judge. “The complaint states that the purpose of the lawsuit is to transfer money from those who benefit from the misconduct – the wrongful promotion and marketing and the failures to warn – to the taxpayers who would otherwise have to bear that burden.”
Boutrous countered that Charleston is asking the oil and gas companies to pay for alleged climate change damage that “overwhelmingly occurred in other states, other countries.”
An estimated 87% of global carbon emissions are generated outside of the United States, he told the judge.
“Only .17% of greenhouse gas emissions originate in South Carolina,” he said.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Right
This article primarily reports on the ongoing climate change lawsuit between Charleston and oil and gas companies, presenting arguments from both sides. However, the framing emphasizes the defense’s legal and constitutional arguments, highlighting points such as the limits of judicial authority over scientific and policy matters and the interstate nature of emissions. The inclusion of strong legal rebuttals from Chevron’s attorney and South Carolina’s attorney general, alongside less detailed presentation of Charleston’s position, subtly aligns the narrative more with a skeptical view of climate litigation. Overall, the piece leans slightly toward a center-right perspective by focusing on legal technicalities and federalism concerns rather than environmental advocacy, while still maintaining factual reporting without overt editorializing.
SUMMARY: President Donald Trump pardoned reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, convicted three years ago of bank fraud and tax evasion, leading to their immediate release from federal prisons. The couple, famed for “Chrisley Knows Best,” were serving long sentences after prosecutors accused them of fraudulent loans and hiding income while living lavishly. Todd was freed from a Florida prison; Julie left a Kentucky facility. Their daughter, Savannah Chrisley, a vocal Trump supporter, awaited Todd’s release, expressing eagerness for family reunification after 2½ years apart. Their attorney claimed the pardon corrected an injustice linked to their conservative views. The convictions were upheld on appeal.
Former President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 2,490 individuals nationwide convicted of federal nonviolent drug offenses, with nearly 300 from North Carolina—the most of any state. The action targets outdated sentencing policies, particularly the harsh disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences, which disproportionately affected Black Americans. Crack cocaine offenses carried much harsher penalties despite chemical similarities to powder cocaine. Efforts to reduce this disparity began in the 1980s and included the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 and the First Step Act of 2018. The commutations seek to address past injustices, reduce mass incarceration, and acknowledge that many sentenced individuals would receive shorter terms under current laws.
by Lucas Thomae, Carolina Public Press May 29, 2025
In one of the most sweeping clemency actions in U.S. history, hundreds of people convicted of federal nonviolent drug offenses in North Carolina will return home this year. Days before leaving office in January, former president Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 2,490 such individuals nationwide.
The commutations aimed to correct what the administration called “outdated” sentences, particularly those related to crack cocaine — a category where enforcement and sentencing have historically had a disproportionate impact on Black Americans.
Commutation is one of the executive clemency powers granted to the president in the U.S. Constitution. It stops just short of a full pardon, allowing the president to shorten the length of a person’s sentence without fully forgiving the crime.
Everyone granted a commutation would have received shorter sentences under today’s policies, Biden said in his announcement of the action.
The case for clemency
Nearly 300 of those commutation recipients were convicted in North Carolina, more than any other U.S. state, according to an analysis from Carolina Public Press. Of those 292 commutation recipients, nearly half were convicted of possession with intent to distribute “cocaine base”, more commonly known as crack.
Since the 1980s, offenses involving crack cocaine have been treated more harshly by prosecutors than powder cocaine. This is despite no chemical difference between the two forms of the drug.
Under federal law, possession of 28 grams or more of crack cocaine merits the same five-year minimum sentence as possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine.
People sentenced for crack cocaine are more likely to be Black, while people sentenced for powder cocaine are more likely to be Latino or white, according to a data brief authored by Princeton University students in December.
Elissa Johnson, a former attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center who currently leads criminal justice campaigns for bipartisan advocacy group FWD.us, told CPP that 88% of clemency recipients were Black, many of whom were sentenced under the crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparity.
“Clemency was an opportunity to address those past injustices with an understanding that it doesn’t make sense to keep people in prison longer, when we know that those sentences would be shorter today,” Johnson said.
Reform efforts stretch decades
The crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparity was first written into law in 1986 by a bipartisan group of lawmakers including Biden, then the junior senator from Delaware.
The original statute was even more strict — a 100:1 difference in sentencing thresholds between crack and powder cocaine.
The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 reduced that disparity to 18:1, and in 2018 Donald Trump signed the First Step Act, which retroactively reduced sentences for people convicted of crack cocaine-related offenses prior to 2010.
Four years later, then-Attorney General Merrick Garlanddirected all federal prosecutors to treat crack cocaine the same as powder cocaine during sentencing. That policy has remained untouched since Trump returned to the White House this year.
Lawmakers have introduced bills to codify the change into federal statute a couple times over the past few congressional cycles, but it has yet to be brought to a vote in either chamber.
A group of current and former Democratic lawmakers signed a letter to Biden in November asking him to use his powers of clemency to reduce the sentences of people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. Two members of Congress from North Carolina, Rep. Alma Adams, D-Charlotte, and Rep. Valerie Foushee, D-Chapel Hill, signed that letter.
Foushee commended Biden’s actions in an email statement.
“Mass incarceration attacks the most vulnerable Americans — and these pardons, including 263 people incarcerated in North Carolina prisons, helps keep families together and prevents intergenerational trauma,” she said.
The anatomy of federal drug cases
The vast majority (78%) of the 292 people offered commutations for crimes prosecuted in North Carolina were charged with distribution, manufacturing or possession of controlled substances with intent to distribute.
Crack was the most common drug cited in those charges, with powder cocaine in a distant second, followed by heroin, fentanyl, marijuana and methamphetamine.
The crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparity reveals itself in the North Carolina data. Commutation recipients convicted of possessing crack cocaine with intent to distribute served 13 years, five months on average — nearly two years more than powder cocaine cases.
Other common charges among the North Carolina commutation recipients were conspiracy to commit drug offenses, use or possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, unlawful possession or transfer of firearms and aiding and abetting.
Most drug crimes are prosecuted at the state, not federal level. The commutations involve only federal cases. Federal law enforcement typically becomes involved in instances of drug trafficking across state or national borders.
However, most people convicted of drug trafficking at the federal level did not hold a leadership or supervisory role in the operation. According to the aforementioned Princeton research, only 6% to 7% of all individuals sentenced for crack cocaine trafficking between 2015 and 2022 held a supervisory role in the operation based on data from the United States Sentencing Commission.
What clemency data doesn’t show
Exactly why North Carolina had the most commutations of any other state is difficult to answer.
One possibility is the location of the Butner federal prison complex in Granville County, which houses 5,000 inmates across four facilities of varying security levels. The complex includes the largest medical complex in the federal Bureau of Prisons system, which operates a drug treatment program.
“It’s the largest prison hospital in the federal system with lots of people who are very sick,” Ben Finholt of the Wilson Center at Duke Law explained in an email.
“And many of those people are worthy clemency recipients.”
Of course, such a designation is subjective, and there are no guidelines given to U.S. presidents about who may be offered clemency. People with medical conditions can often make sympathetic candidates for clemency.
Russ Ferguson, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, told CPP in an email that while his office respected the authority of the president to grant clemency, he did not think the sentences that Biden commuted were “unfair or disproportionate.”
Sixty people sentenced in the Western District received a commutation from Biden, although Ferguson prosecuted none of them. He replaced a Biden appointee who resigned her position soon after Trump took office in January.
“We put a great deal of effort into calculating and arguing for appropriate and fair sentences for every defendant we prosecute,” Ferguson said.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
This article presents a generally factual account of President Biden’s clemency actions focused on nonviolent federal drug offenders, emphasizing racial disparities in sentencing and historical context. It highlights criticisms of past sentencing laws and references bipartisan reform efforts, while including supportive quotes from criminal justice advocates and Democratic lawmakers. The coverage is sympathetic to the clemency initiative and its social justice goals, but also notes opposing views from a U.S. Attorney defending sentencing fairness. The framing and choice of sources lean moderately left by focusing on systemic injustice and reform, without overt partisan language or ideological advocacy.
