20% of US climate litigation cases can be understood as “protective litigation” targeted at President Trump’s rollbacks, study finds
“Cases brought to resist regulatory rollbacks, funding freezes and the dismantling of existing climate rules, now constitute around 20% of climate cases filed in the US in 2025” according to analysis published today (25 June 2026) by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
In Global trends in climate change litigation: 2026 snapshot, the authors state that current level of protective climate litigation is “without precedent.” This growth in cases is also evident in other parts of the world, though less dramatically. During the first Trump administration 13% of cases fell into this category, significantly fewer than in President Trump’s second term.
The authors, Joana Setzer and Catherine Higham, also point out that the “current moment is marked by the increasing scale, coordination and institutional depth of opposition to climate action.” Around 12% of cases (31 causes in total) filed in 2025 can be understood as anti-climate litigation. This pattern is clearest and best documented in the US.
The range of corporate defendants continues to widen, with more than 50 strategic climate-aligned cases filed against companies in 2025, spanning the energy, finance, transport, real estate and consumer goods sectors. This brings the total to 434 cases since 2015. State-owned enterprises and state-owned financial institutions, including multilateral institutions, are defendants in at least 42 of these cases.
This year witnessed the first cases of insurance companies seeking to recover financial losses linked to climate change from governments. “The cases now emerging reveal an industry that is, perhaps inadvertently, entering the climate litigation landscape in ways that may have serious implications for climate justice, implications the industry are unlikely to have fully reckoned with.”
In 2025, 249 new climate cases were filed, bringing the total since 1986 to more than 3,600 cases across 62 countries, up from just 17 countries a decade ago. Over three quarters of these cases have been filed since 2015, the year of the Paris Agreement. In 2025, cases were newly filed in Grenada, Guatemala, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Singapore and Zambia.
Cases challenging decisions that have ignored, incorrectly assessed or inadequately applied climate considerations, standards or evidence are the largest category of strategic climate cases, with more than 100 new cases filed in 2025.
In Brazil, prosecutors have filed almost 200 cases since 2024 targeting unlawful deforestation and seeking compensation for damage to the climate system from those responsible. In Europe, the European Central Bank has issued enforcement actions against two banks for their failure to assess climate and environmental risks, whilst in Australia, consumer and investor protection watchdogs are active as enforcement claimants.
Catherine Higham, Senior Policy Fellow at the Grantham Research institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said:
“Once again, we see the field of climate litigation maturing and changing. For the first time, we’re starting to see insurance companies taking governments to court over their failure to properly tackle climate change.
“Litigation against the continued roll out of data centres is the next area that is set to grow massively in the US and across the world, as people challenge their climate impacts in the courts.”
Joana Setzer, Associate Professor at the Grantham Research institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said:
“Climate litigation is now a permanent feature of the global governance landscape. The question is not whether it will impact climate action, but how much, in which direction and at what pace.
“Our research suggests that the answer will be shaped in the coming years by the cumulative effect of hundreds of cases, in dozens of jurisdictions, advanced by people and organisations who are learning from each other across legal systems and continental boundaries with increasing speed.”
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