MRC Free Speech America update summary: On March 28, 2025, Trump’s SEC voted to stop defending the Biden-era climate change disclosure rule.
The following article is a supplement to the MRC Report: The Biden Administration Waged War on Free Speech with 57 Censorship Initiatives.
Initiative #45: The Climate Disclosure Rule
Type of Censorship: Policy or rulemaking
Agencies Involved:
- Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC)
Summary:
Chairman Gary Gensler’s Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a compelled speech rule that simultaneously threatened companies with massive liability if they permitted speech critical of the left’s position on climate change and compelled them to engage in reciting the left’s climate mantras.
Under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) instituted a “climate disclosure rule.” This rule mandated that companies “pronounce their subjective judgment calls about future risks—requiring, for example, ‘determination[s]
of’ which risks to their businesses are ‘climate-related.’” The rule required companies to consider hypothetical climate effects of actions they were only tangentially related to.
In addition to a massive regulatory burden, this rule made companies liable if someone could argue in any court that the statements of its staff were misleading about the risks associated with climate change. This meant that, to be safe from potential costly litigation, corporations were obligated to limit any employee speech criticizing the left’s position that we are in a man-made climate crisis.
It should also be noted that on several occasions Congress explicitly considered and rejected the idea of mandating climate disclosures. The SEC decided to impose the rules anyway, despite many legal scholars arguing it had no authority to do so.
Key Individuals:
- Caroline Crenshaw, SEC Commissioner
- Gary Gensler, SEC Chair
- Jaime Lizárraga, SEC Commissioner
