The Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking to rescind climate-related disclosure rules that it calls costly and overly burdensome.
The SEC announced a proposal to end regulations that require companies to provide certain climate-related information in their registration statements and annual reports. The commission said the move is aimed at returning to its core mandate, in line with its legal authority, and restoring an approach to securities regulation focusing on materiality.
“SEC disclosure obligations should comply with the Commission’s statutory authority, be guided by materiality as the North Star, avoid the practical effect of dictating corporate behavior, and be imposed only when the expected benefits justify the likely costs and burdens,” said SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins.
The climate rules were adopted in 2024 under the Biden Administration, with amendments to the Securities Act of 1933 and Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that mandated disclosure from public companies about climate-related matters such as greenhouse gas emissions, management of climate-related risks, and the financial statement effects of severe weather events.
The SEC then stayed the rules pending completion of consolidated litigation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
The following year the commission voted to end its defense of the final rules. In September 2025, the Eighth Circuit issued an order holding the consolidated petitions for review in abeyance until the SEC reconsidered the challenged rules by rulemaking or renewed its defense of the climate disclosure rules.
The SEC is now proposing to rescind the climate rules in their entirety because they exceed the scope of the agency’s statutory authority but added, “Even if it had authority to adopt such final rules, the Commission believes there are independent, compelling policy reasons” for scrapping the rules entirely:
- They are unnecessary and inconsistent with a registrant-specific, materiality-based approach to disclosure that best serves the interests of registrants and investors.
- They stray well beyond the policy concerns of the federal securities laws.
- They impose substantial costs on public companies and their shareholders that are not justified by the informational benefits they may provide to some investors.
- They are at odds with the Commission’s policy objectives of facilitating capital formation and promoting public company status.
A public comment period is open for 60 days following the publication of the proposing release in the Federal Register.
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