On May 29, 2026, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC, or the Commission) voted to propose the rescission of its March 2024 climate-related disclosure rules in their entirety. The Commission’s decision to walk back the rules – which had been stayed by a federal court since April 2024 and never took effect – was not unexpected. The Commission abandoned its defense of the rules in March 2025, and the Eighth Circuit subsequently held the challenges in abeyance pending the Commission’s consideration of whether to modify or rescind the rules.

What is potentially significant, however, is how the Commission justified proposing to rescind the rules – and what that justification could mean for the future of SEC disclosure rulemaking well beyond climate. In short, the arguments the Commission outlined in the May 29 release (the Rescission Proposing Release) set out a roadmap for future plaintiffs to challenge not only other so-called “ESG” disclosures required by the SEC, but potentially a swath of other disclosure rules as well, many of which have been in place for an extended period of time. This roadmap for plaintiffs, in turn, could complicate efforts by future Commissions to issue new disclosure rules, whether on “ESG” matters or otherwise. The legal theories outlined in the Rescission Proposing Release seem designed to cabin the agency’s future rulemakings, perhaps dramatically.

(more…)