(Reuters) – Wall Street’s top regulator said on Thursday it had voted to cease legal efforts to defend regulations that require companies to disclose climate-related emissions, risks and spending, and had been hotly contested by industrial lobby groups.
The decision by the Republican-dominated U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had been widely expected following public remarks last month by its acting chairman, Mark Uyeda.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has acted to roll back virtually all of the prior administration’s efforts to address climate change.
“The goal of today’s Commission action and notification to the court is to cease the Commission’s involvement in the defense of the costly and unnecessarily intrusive climate change disclosure rules,” Uyeda said in a statement.
The Commission adopted the rule last year, aiming to give investors information about the buildup of climate risk and associated costs in the financial system.
However, lobby groups and Republican state attorneys general immediately sued, charging that the regulations overstepped the SEC’s legal authority and would burden businesses.
The SEC had been facing a self-imposed deadline of Friday to tell the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit of its planned course of action. The agency had asked the court early last month not to schedule oral arguments while it considered what to do.
Steven Rothstein, a senior official at the environmental advocacy group Ceres, called the SEC’s decision “truly unfortunate,” pointing to investor demands for climate-related information.
“This is clearly a step backward in helping investors and others have the information they need,” he said.
(Reporting by Douglas Gillison in Washington ; additional reporting by Ross Kerber in Boston; Editing by Rod Nickel)
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