Democratic attorneys general in at least nine states and Washington, D.C., have hired the same climate-focused law firm, Sher Edling LLP, to sue oil companies on their behalf in recent years. At the same time, that firm has donated $49,000 to the Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA), which is led by and works to elect those same officials.
Sher Edling wired the group $24,000 in November 2023 and another $25,000 in September 2024, according to a Washington Free Beacon review of federal political organization tax filings. Those represent the only donations of their kind that Sher Edling has made as a firm—its individual partners have separately given a few thousand dollars to state-level campaigns and tens of thousands to federal campaigns.
The donations provide a window into the cozy relationship between Sher Edling and the country’s Democratic attorneys general. On one hand, the partnership allows Democrats to publicly take on a favorite progressive boogeyman in the oil industry with little risk, and on the other hand, the cases provide Sher Edling with the promise of a potentially massive payout.
As a result, Sher Edling has a direct incentive to help DAGA reelect and elect the same officials who have hired the firm or who may hire the firm in the future. Its donations also directly benefit some of those officials—DAGA’s co-chair Kathy Jennings (D., Del.), vice chair Keith Ellison (D., Minn.), and executive committee members Rob Bonta (D., Calif.) and Andrea Joy Campbell (D., Mass.) are among the 10 attorneys general who have hired Sher Edling in their taxpayer-funded capacity.
At the time of the first donation, Sher Edling represented four states and D.C. in cases against oil companies. Since then, it has spearheaded another four similar lawsuits on behalf of other Democratic attorneys general and entered into a contract with a fifth state, Michigan, to represent it in a potential case. All of the filed cases remain pending before state judges.
Broadly, the novel lawsuits accuse the nation’s largest oil producers, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP, of deceiving the public about their products’ downstream environmental impacts and argue the companies are therefore financially responsible for global warming. If the states are successful, courts could force oil industry defendants to pay weather-related damages, something experts say would threaten the companies’ ability to stay afloat.
Well-funded environmental grantmaking foundations, meanwhile, bankroll Sher Edling, enabling it to litigate the cases free of charge on the front end. Groups like the Tides Foundation, Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund have sent nearly $14 million to the firm since 2017, tax filings show.
Sher Edling’s contracts with the states have the potential to become even more lucrative for the firm. As is common for tort law firms, Sher Edling will receive compensation from the states if the lawsuits are successful and defendants are ordered to pay damages, at which point Sher Edling would receive a percentage of the damages. While the exact dollar amounts of such payments haven’t been defined, it is widely expected that they would be worth billions of dollars.
And the firm holds a near monopoly on representing states in such cases, making it more likely that it would receive such a payment if any of the cases prove successful. The arrangement, in turn, allows Democratic attorneys general to tout lawsuits against oil companies without having to expend official resources on them.
“The climate crisis [oil companies] have caused is undeniable. It is time they pay to abate the harm they have caused,” Bonta remarked after California sued oil companies in September 2023.
“It’s only fair that, as our complaint states, the parties who have profited from avoiding the consequences and costs of dealing with global warming,” Ellison said in 2020, “bear the costs of those impacts, rather than Minnesota taxpayers, residents, or broader segments of the public.”
The coordinated effort to sue oil companies dates back to 2016 when Sher Edling was founded in San Francisco with the purpose of spearheading the lawsuits. Since then, the firm has filed cases on behalf of nine states and more than a dozen cases on behalf of city and county governments.
Overall, it has pending cases in jurisdictions that are home to more than 25 percent of Americans. In fact, the firm is so active that it asked the Supreme Court last month to give it a 60-day extension in a Maryland case since it had so many upcoming court deadlines to meet.
In a statement to the Free Beacon, Sher Edling spokesman John Lamson said Democratic attorneys general “are fighting back against fascism.”
DAGA did not respond to a request for comment.
