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Missouri withdraws appeal in ESG lawsuit (2024)
| Environmental, social, and corporate governance |
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| • What is ESG? • Enacted ESG legislation • Arguments for and against ESG • Opposition to ESG • Federal ESG rules • ESG legislation tracker • Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's weekly ESG newsletter |
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) announced the state will withdraw its appeal of a court ruling overturning two anti-ESG investment rules. The rules would have penalized asset managers who invested based on ESG factors without the written consent of their clients. The withdrawal leaves the constitutional question for similar rules unsettled in U.S. courts:
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Last month, a federal district court struck down Missouri's anti-ESG rules that would prohibit investment advisors from utilizing ESG factors when making investment decisions (absent written consent of the client). Specifically, the court awarded summary judgment to SIFMA, a trade association that had challenged the anti-ESG rules, and held that the rules violated the U.S. Constitution. Missouri had elected to appeal that ruling to the Eighth Circuit. However, the Missouri Attorney-General has now abandoned that appeal, dooming the anti-ESG rules previously championed by Missouri. (As part of the agreement to end the appeal, SIFMA is receiving only $500,000 in legal fees--rather than the $1.3 million in legal fees it had originally sought.) While there is now no opportunity for the specific anti-ESG rules Missouri had promulgated to be revived, the decision to abandon the appeal also means that the Eighth Circuit will not have the opportunity to opine on the legality of these rules--and so avoids the prospect of a legal judgment that would devastate the anti-ESG political project.[1] |
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See also
- Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG)
- Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's ESG newsletter
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
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