American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers v. James

The trade associations American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers and American Petroleum Institute filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the Southern District of New York challenging the constitutionality of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. The complaint alleged that the reporting program “imposes a complex, unprecedented reporting regime on energy-industry participants across the country, whether or not they are located or do business in New York,” including requirements that out-of-state entities report “detailed, commercially sensitive, and often proprietary information about oil and gas supplies, products, sources, and markets.” The complaint also alleged that the program authorized DEC to conduct “warrantless inspections of facilities outside New York State” and imposed significant civil and criminal penalties for noncompliance. The trade groups asserted that program violates the dormant Commerce Clause and the constitutional prohibition on extraterritorial regulation, as well as the First Amendment (“by compelling overbroad and misleading disclosure (speech), regarding commercially sensitive information, on matters of public controversy without a compelling or substantial governmental interest”) and the Fourth Amendment (“by contriving consent to warrantless searches and inspections of out-of-state facilities and compelling production of private data without an opportunity for pre-compliance review”). In addition, they asserted that the program violates the Supremacy Clause because it is preempted by the Clean Air Act.