Retirees Say ESG Blacklist Threatens Financial Security

  • November 9, 2025

ESG graphic with a red X across it

ESG Blacklist legal fight remains active at the Oklahoma Supreme Court

More than a year after an Oklahoma County District Court judge enjoined the state from enforcement of its anti-ESG law and ordered State Treasurer Todd Russ to stop creating a ESG Blacklist, the case remains before the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
However, legal friction continues building because this ruling carries national attention.
Additionally, Oklahoma Energy policy groups track the outcome because ESG frameworks impact long-term capital.
Also, this case could impact access to banking, underwriting and investor services tied to oil and gas financing across the state.

Judge Sheila Stinson’s ruling was prompted by a 2023 lawsuit filed by the state retiree Don Keenan who challenged Oklahoma’s Energy Discrimination Elimination Act.
Keenan died in April of this year but the case continued before the Supreme Court.
Therefore, argument legal force remains active even without the original plaintiff alive.
Additionally, this creates a rare extended judicial review window without procedural collapse.

Keenan maintained the enforcement of firms blacklisted for ESG policies against the oil and gas industry harmed state retirees like himself.
Late in 2024, two national organizations, the Democracy Forward Foundation and Ceres Inc. joined as friends of the court or Amicus Curiae.
Also, national groups entering this case signals much bigger stakes than a single state compliance conflict.

National advocacy groups bring heavyweight support into the ESG legal arena

Ceres US described itself as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization working with investors, companies, and nonprofits to address sustainability challenges through market-based and policy solutions.
Ceres’ Investor Network includes more than 220 institutional investors with $44 trillion in assets under management, assets from labor unions and city and state pension funds.
Additionally, that scale of asset representation triggers major risk signaling for policymakers.
Also, that level of capital influence could shift future ESG alignment rules in Oklahoma.

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Democracy Forward Foundation is described as a 501 nonprofit legal services and public policy research organization in Washington, D.C.
Founded in 2017, the organization works to expose and litigate corruption in the Executive Branch of the United States government.
However, their involvement inside this Oklahoma case marks a strategic expansion into energy regulation perimeter fights.
Additionally, their legal skill set focuses on federal executive accountability which could change argument framing.

Case remains active and monitored even without new filings this fall

The case, while still considered active before the Supreme Court, saw its last filing by attorneys in June.
However, it remains monitored by interested union organizations.
Additionally, these groups see this case as a major precedent test for future retirement protection cases nationwide.
Also, if Oklahoma loses this fight, other states could see similar ESG restriction statutes challenged.

This Supreme Court decision could have national economic ripple effects.
Therefore, the outcome will shape how states write rules around ESG discrimination, capital value filters and enforcement authority.

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Ricky Burns, President, Professional Fire Fighters of Oklahoma and Sabra Tucker, Executive Director, Oklahoma Retired Educators Association offered an op-ed piece about the controversial law.
From 2022 to 2024 Oklahoma experienced 21-billion-dollar weather events, with seven of them occurring in 2024.  In the same year, Oklahoma had 12 fatalities and 99 injuries, and $356.81 million in property damages. These aren’t just statistics, these numbers represent lost homes, shattered lives, and communities struggling to rebuild from one disaster before the next one strikes. Oklahoma homeowners are also seeing the costs of extreme weather. From 2021 to 2024, the average premium for homeowner’s insurance rose 13%, from $5,171 to $5,819. Sadly, the frequency of floods, droughts, and storms is only expected to increase leading to higher costs for Oklahomans.  
Despite these mounting pressures, the state legislature in 2022 passed the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act, which would ban the state from working with investors and asset managers considering variables that can increase risk the return on investments. What does this mean for Oklahomans? For Oklahomans that have worked hard and saved for retirement, the EDEA would ban their pension managers from considering all risks that impact returns, including the financial risks posed by a changing climate. 
The impacts of this misguided bill are already being felt by Oklahoma workers and retirees. Retirement fund managers BlackRock and State Street manage $6.8 billion of Oklahoma pension funds. The EDEA would force Oklahoma to divest funds from their investment managers costing an estimated $9.7 million, according to the Oklahoma Public Employee Retirement System. Similar legislation passed in other states has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars through higher interest rates on municipal bonds and imposed unreasonable burdens on financial institutions. 
What lawmakers are failing to understand is that this legislation doesn’t just harm returns, it fundamentally undermines the long-term viability of investment management. Proper investment management requires that fund managers and fiduciaries, those responsible for acting in the best interest of their clients, consider all risk factors that could impact investment returns. For example, if new regulations hurt oil companies, pension managers in Oklahoma couldn’t adjust their investments accordingly, while managers elsewhere could. Barring fiduciaries from considering and acting upon real-world risks would artificially skew their calculations and prevent them from prudently selecting investments.   
This puts Oklahoma retirees at a financial disadvantage compared to retirees in other states. 
The legal implications of this legislation are also troubling. This fundamental shift creates a conflict between state law and fiduciary duties as fund managers have a legal duty to invest prudently—considering all relevant risk, including environmental factors. This discrepancy puts investment managers at risk, exposing them to lawsuits from clients for not following standard investment practices that are available everywhere else in the country.  
Given the negative outcomes of this legislation, why would our legislature pass a bill that puts Oklahoman’s at risk? Advocates for the law have explained that the EDEA was designed in response to the federal government’s considerations of climate risk and to help out the oil and gas industry—not hardworking Oklahomans.  
The EDEA tries to prevent the consideration of environmental factors, forcing investment managers to ignore an entire category of risk. These restrictions violate investment managers’ legal duty to act carefully on behalf of the people whose money they manage. Making matters worse, the financial harm from the EDEA will likely hurt the state’s retirees most.  
Andrew Collier, Director of Freedom to Invest at Ceres, Tori Pennington, President of the OK AFT, and Jimmy Curry, President of the OK AFL-CIO contributed to this piece and have voiced strong opposition to this misguided legislation. As fiduciaries of Oklahoma workers, we all urge the court to uphold the lower court’s ruling that strikes down this law. 

Jerry Bohnen