Our co-founder, Ted Frank, authored this City Journal piece about activist plaintiffs using “nuisance lawsuits” to create environmental regulations.
Most judges recognize that the judiciary is not a legislature. That hasn’t stopped activist plaintiffs from bringing “public nuisance” suits, seeking to implement environmental regulations that voters and their elected representatives have repeatedly rebuffed. While federal judges have rejected many of these suits, the Hawaii Supreme Court in October let the city of Honolulu’s public-nuisance case against oil and gas producers proceed, bucking a 2021 ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in an analogous New York case. The U.S. Supreme Court should review this conflict and shut down the Hawaii court’s abuse of the justice system.
Read more in City Journal.