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Federal
On September 12, 2025, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that the legal challenge to the Biden administration's climate disclosure regulation be "held in abeyance" until the "Securities and Exchange Commission reconsiders the challenged Final Rules by notice-and-comment rulemaking or renews its defense of the Final Rules." In effect, the Eighth Circuit has rejected the attempt by the Trump administration to compel the courts to issue an advisory opinion on whether the SEC's prior effort to engage in climate change–focused rulemaking was beyond the scope of their regulatory mandate. Instead, the court — noting that the SEC has ceased to defend the climate change rule — has stated that "[i]t is the agency's responsibility to determine whether its Final Rules will be rescinded, repealed, modified, or defended in litigation." However, this decision by the Eighth Circuit does not mean that the climate disclosure regulation will enter into effect. Rather, as the court noted, "the Final Rules have been stayed, and [so] an abeyance will not cause material prejudice" — in other words, since no one is being forced to comply with rules that are not currently in force, there is no harm in delaying the resolution of the legal challenges. Based upon this development, it will likely be years before the courts have the opportunity to rule on the question of whether issuing climate-focused rules is within the scope of the SEC's authority.
On September 10, 2025, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission withdrew guidance — promulgated by the Biden administration in September 2024 — concerning the market for voluntary carbon credits. Specifically, the CFTC stated that it was withdrawing the voluntary carbon credit guidance because it "provides limited value" and because it "placed a disproportionate focus on a particular class of derivative contracts" — i.e., contracts concerning carbon credits. Rather, the CFTC stated that a "uniform regulatory framework" — without guidance specifically concerning carbon credits — "best serves market transparency, expectations, fairness, and integrity." This development — revoking the CFTC guidance concerning voluntary carbon credits — is aligned with the broader de-regulatory impetus of the Trump administration to roll back climate change–focused regulations.
State
On September 2, 2025, the California Air Resources Board "released draft guidance to assist reporting entities in complying" with California's mandatory climate disclosure regulations. In essence, the bulk of this draft guidance constituted a checklist that could be used when preparing the climate risk report mandated for companies with revenue of more than $500 million per year. Notably, this guidance was published mere weeks after the major legal challenge to the California climate disclosure regulations was resolved in favor of the regulations by the federal district court (although the decision is currently being appealed), signaling California's commitment to its mandatory climate disclosure regulations. Further reinforcing this commitment, on September 24, 2025, the California Air Resources Board released a preliminary list of about 4,100 companies identified as covered by California's mandatory climate disclosure regulations.
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