Republished with permission from Documented

A new wave of legislation designed to shield the fossil fuel industry from state and local climate lawsuits has roots in the secretive, well-funded network helmed by right-wing operative Leonard Leo. New reporting from ProPublica reveals that two organizations, closely tied to the Leo network, have shopped model legislation aimed at undermining climate litigation to right-wing lawmakers, primarily through the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. The reporting was based on materials obtained by Documented.

The new model bills promoted by Consumers’ Research and the Alliance for Consumers at ALEC’s annual States & Nation Policy Summit, in Fort Worth, Texas, last year take direct aim at lawsuits filed by localities and states across the country that seek to recover the costs associated with responding and adapting to climate impacts knowingly caused by oil and gas companies.

One bill would bar municipalities from seeking damages under existing state public nuisance laws, a novel legal strategy deployed by cities such as Boulder, Colorado, to offset climate-related costs. Another would protect emitters of greenhouse gases from civil liability if their activities do not violate the federal Clean Air Act. A third would preclude individuals engaged in unlawful activity from seeking damages for negligence or excessive force. That bill appears to target climate protestors, who are often met with violence from law enforcement and private security companies.

In order to move these bills through state legislatures, the Leo network has hired Varidon Strategies, a lobbying firm established by a Heritage Action alumna in the spring of 2025. In less than a year, Varidon has registered to lobby on behalf of multiple Leo-linked organizations in more than half of all states, according to an analysis by Documented. Lawmakers in 11 states have already introduced the model bills, according to ProPublica. In Utah, two proposals have become law. In Kansas, the GOP supermajority in the state legislature passed one of the model bills after overriding the governor’s veto.

The bills’ passage fulfills a challenge that panelist O.H. Skinner, executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, put to lawmakers at the ALEC policy summit: “Think really hard about every lever you have in your states to shut off the ability for this woke lawfare machine to churn.”

Leonard Leo’s Network

In early December 2025, ALEC convened lawmakers, corporate leaders, and other activists at its annual States & Nation Policy Summit, in Fort Worth, Texas. Over the course of three days, participants attended a series of panels promoting a broad slate of model legislation that they were encouraged to introduce in their state legislatures. One panel, titled “ESG and the New Legal Battlefield,” featured three panelists:

• Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research;

• O.H. Skinner, the executive director of Alliance for Consumers; and

• Paul Watkins, a legal fellow at Consumers’ Research and founding partner of Fusion Law, PLLC.

Founded in 1929 to educate Americans about harmful products, Consumers’ Research underwent a major reinvention nearly a century later, in 2020, when Federalist Society alumnus Will Hild took over the organization. From then on, the group narrowly targeted so-called “wokeism” in corporate America. Early targets of the organization’s work, dubbed the Consumers First Initiative, included American Airlines and Coca-Cola (for purportedly opposing voter ID laws) and Nike (for backing professional football quarterback-turned-activist Colin Kaepernick). In 2023, Consumers’ Research ratcheted up this self-described “name and shame” campaign with the launch of “Woke Alerts,” a text messaging service intended to organize boycotts against supposedly progressive corporations. That year, the organization disseminated an alert against Bud Light after the alcoholic beverage company collaborated with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. The campaign, part of a larger right-wing offensive against Bud Light, resulted in significant losses for the company and forced Mulvaney into hiding after she received death threats. It was arguably Consumers’ Research’s most punitive campaign to date.

At least some of the organization’s public campaigns, however, appear to belie their true motivations. Take, for example, the Swiss insurance company Chubb, which Consumers’ Research has assailed for myriad transgressions, such as “climate extremism, gender ideology, and support for diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg has argued his company only came under attack because it supports reforming litigation financing, a practice whereby wealthy investors and funds, including Leonard Leo’s nonprofits, front the cost of litigation in an exchange for a cut of awarded damages or a settlement.

Consumers’ Research has ironically also gone after government agencies tasked with protecting American consumers, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). In 2024, Consumers’ Research went so far as to ask the Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional the structure of the CPSC, a federal agency that evaluates the safety of consumer products and coordinates recalls.

Alliance for Consumers operates in a similar anti-woke space. Since at least 2022, Alliance for Consumers as well as Consumers’ Research have been at the forefront of the movement to beat back Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations in corporate America. Their efforts, in tandem with other actions taken by Leonard Leo-connected groups, like the Republican Attorneys General Association, have scuttled corporate action to address climate change, including facilitating the disbandment of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.

Consumers’ Research’s and Alliance for Consumers’ work to undermine ESG has been complementary, if ostensibly independent. But their outward appearances obscure deep financial ties that enmesh both organizations within the dark-money network of Leonard Leo, the right-wing activist widely credited with masterminding the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court during President Trump’s first term.

In 2024, the most recent year for which we have data, Consumers’ Research brought in more than $9.34 million in contributions. The group collected $6.1 million, or 65% of all donations, from the donor-advised fund Donors Trust, the so-called “dark money ATM of the conservative movement.”

Donor-advised funds like Donors Trust intentionally obscure actual donors’ identities, but in the search for Consumers’ Research’s key funder, all signs point to a single individual: Leonard Leo.

Prior to taking over Consumers’ Research, Will Hild worked at the Federalist Society, where Leonard Leo had built his career before becoming the organization’s co-chairman that same year. Hild has described Leo as “a good friend and adviser,” and, in 2023, told Bloomberg that he counts Leo as “his main financial backer” (that year, Consumers’ Research collected $6.51 million, or roughly 80% of all donations, from Donors Trust, which had received $92.05 million from The 85 Fund, a significant player in Leo’s nonprofit network).  Every year, Consumers’ Research pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to Leo’s consulting firm, CRC Advisors, according to its publicly available tax records.

Alliance for Consumers is even more integrated into the Leo network. In fact, when it was first established, it was simply an alias for the Concord Fund, another key funding node in Leo’s web of nonprofits. Every year since 2021, the Concord Fund has received a significant chunk of its funding from an organization called Marble Freedom Trust, whose founder and chairman is Leonard Leo. Today, Alliance for Consumers is housed within the Lexington Fund, yet another nonprofit tied to Leo.

Direct funding streams also exist between Alliance for Consumers and Consumers’ Research: Consumers’ Defense, the 501(c)(4) arm of Consumers’ Research, collects virtually all of its revenue from the Concord Fund year after year.

Coordination on Climate Litigation

On the panel, Hild, Skinner, and Watkins pitched three pieces of model legislation aimed at undermining climate action championed by activists and political leaders, primarily through the courts.

“It’s about protecting your jurisdictions from out-of-state lawfare,” Hild said of the proposals.

One such bill is Consumers’ Defense’s “Energy Freedom Act.” This legislation would insulate companies from liability related to greenhouse gas emissions, if those releases are legal under the federal Clean Air Act. Hild told those in attendance that the bill’s wording was primarily based on Justice Kavanaugh’s dissenting language in a recent case concerning the dormant Commerce Clause legal theory, which holds that Congress alone may regulate interstate commerce.

The model legislation “creates a right in your state to engage in the exploration, production, transportation, sale, manufacturing, refining, combustion, and other use of fossil fuels,” Hild said. “It sets up a direct conflict between your state’s laws and some ruling by an activist judge in Hawaii or New Jersey.”

This conflict, according to Hild, could only be resolved by the Supreme Court, which would be forced to deal with the legality of certain climate remedies, like state climate superfunds.

A second piece of legislation, often introduced in statehouses as the

This specific model bill, as Skinner explained, would “trim back” public nuisance by making it impossible for anyone to bring a public nuisance lawsuit against a company that is engaged in the production, marketing, and sale of a legal product, such as fossil fuels and firearms. The legislation also vests authority to redress a global public nuisance or one spanning multiple jurisdictions with a state’s attorney general, thereby preventing a city like Boulder from suing energy companies.

At ALEC, much of the discussion around the Public Nuisance Reform Act centered on how the legislation would protect fossil fuel companies. But other industries would also benefit from the model bill. As Will Hild highlighted, public nuisance laws have recently been enforced against automakers, firearm manufacturers, and plastic packaging producers. These companies would also theoretically receive protection from liability under the Public Nuisance Reform Act.

The final piece of model legislation, sometimes called the “Eliminate Criminal Profiteering Act,” would preclude an individual engaged in unlawful activity from suing a property owner for negligence or other tort. For example, under the law, a climate activist who sneaks onto private property to protest a pipeline would not be able to sue the property owners if they were injured while trespassing. In effect, the law would provide energy companies greater cover to take a heavy-handed approach in breaking up protests targeting their businesses. The model bill additionally targets undocumented immigrants by preventing them from recovering damages arising from automobile accidents.

While primarily crafted to protect energy companies, both the Public Nuisance Reform Act and the Eliminate Criminal Profiteering Act contain provisions that address other issues of importance to the political right: namely firearms and undocumented immigration, respectively. The bills’ breadth evinces how they are intended as panaceas, satisfying many corporate and political interests at the same time.

Varidon Strategies Works in the States

At ALEC, Skinner encouraged attendees to speak with Catherine Gunsalus, who was also in attendance, about the proposals. A Kansas native, Gunsalus most recently served as the director of state advocacy for Heritage Action for America, the advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation.

In March 2025, Gunsalus left Heritage Action to found Varidon Strategies, a state lobbying firm, where she still serves as president. To date, Varidon Strategies has registered in more than half of all states to lobby on behalf of Leonard Leo-linked organizations, including Alliance for Consumers and Consumers’ Research’s advocacy arm.

ProPublica found that, as of April 2026, legislators in 11 states had introduced versions of the bills discussed on the ALEC panel in their legislatures. In Kansas, two pieces of legislation were specifically credited to Varidon Strategies.

The Stakes

Although Utah and Kansas are so far the only states where some of these bills have become law, the Leo-backed anti-ESG movement has continued to grow. Once passed, the legislation would hamstring the climate movement’s ability to hold energy companies responsible for global climate change and redress their harms.

Of even greater concern is the disproportionate impact that a single bill can have on the rest of the country. As Will Hild said at the ALEC event, his organization’s Energy Freedom Act is intended to tee up a Supreme Court case that would set a nationwide precedent. Doing so would undermine climate action in red and blue states alike.

These are the stakes that Hild made clear at ALEC. As he put it bluntly, “This is economic civil war.”