CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron are co-leading a multistate effort over concerns with a proposed regulation that would require “certain Federal contractors disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risk and set science-based targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.”
The coalition sent a letter this week to the Department of Defense, General Services Administration and NASA.
“The Biden administration will use every single bureaucracy and skirt checks and balances to advance their woke climate agenda,” Morrisey said, writing “the Federal procurement system is not a vehicle for the President to further his policy wishes. ...
Cameron
| Courtesy photo
“We will vigorously fight this and all regulatory overreach as this administration tries to establish rules to advance their ESG (environmental, social and governance) agenda.”
Federal contractors employ more than one-fifth of the labor force in the United States and contribute billions of dollars to state economies.
In its February 13 letter, the coalition says the proposed regulation — Federal Acquisition Regulation: Disclosure of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate-Related Financial Risk — would render individuals or businesses seeking federal contracts ineligible if they fail to make the required climate disclosures.
“The FAR [Federal Acquisition Regulation] exists to promote efficiency in the federal procurement system, not to be a vehicle for climate change policies,” the coalition wrote, noting the “President cannot direct the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council to regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the FAR.”
Congress also “has not empowered FARC to implement climate change policy through the FAR.”
“This is not the end of this administration’s intent to advance their climate agenda at all costs,” Morrisey said. “My colleagues and I will remain steadfast in fighting federal overreach through our offices and the courts.”
Morrisey has taken several stances against ESG practices, including leading coalitions in challenging proposals from the Securities and Exchange Commission to saddle American businesses with crippling ESG-related disclosure requirements. He also fought against the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and bank regulators when they proposed to do the same.
He also joined a major coalition in writing a letter to BlackRock urging the financial firm to “come clean on whether it actually values our states’ most valuable stakeholders, our current and future retirees, or risk losses even more significant than those caused by BlackRock’s quixotic climate agenda.”
Last month, Morrisey was part of a coalition of 25 states that sued the U.S. Department of Labor over a recently issued rule governing certain investment practices — the Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights. The coalition says the rule pushes a woke, left-wing agenda that inappropriately promotes the ESG initiative, irrationally contradicts the 2020 Investment Rule and offends the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
In December 2021, Morrisey and 22 other states sent a letter to the DOL raising concerns about the rule. The coalition urged DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration not to adopt the rule because it encourages and “may in fact” require fund managers to consider ESG factors when making decisions about where and how to invest.
He also recently joined a 21-state coalition in writing a letter to two of the nation’s largest proxy advisory firms— Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis & Co.— raising concerns with how ESG considerations affect the firms’ proxy voting recommendations and conflict with the financial interests of their clients.
Morrisey and Cameron were joined in the letter by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming.
