Lawfare California Style – AG Rob Bonta Targets Oil Companies

At the time, a gallon of regular gas in California averaged more than $5.60, the highest price in the nation, about a dollar more than it is today. Michaelson asked Bonta whether the landmark civil suit, modeled on the successful multi-state litigation against tobacco companies in the 1990s, would drive prices even higher.

“We are protecting folks in California, including those who pay for gas, and I don’t know what the impacts will be of our effort to hold big oil accountable, but it must end,” Bonta replied, referring to what he cast as decades of deceit by the companies aimed at downplaying their products’ impact on the climate.

Late last month, Bonta opened a new front in his war on fossil fuels, filing a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, alleging that the company also misled the public on the merits of plastic recycling. And last week, the Superior Court of San Francisco denied a motion filed by major oil producers to dismiss climate-related suits filed in California based on the court lacking “personal jurisdiction.”

Few would question Bonta’s audacity in targeting big oil and gas (former California attorneys general, including Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra, declined to file similar suits). But the Yale-educated lawyer is well aware that sweeping legal action could push already steep gas prices across his state – and many others – higher still.

By April Bonta was saying the quiet part out loud. He acknowledged in remarks to the environmental group Climate One that one goal of the lawsuits is to make oil and gas “more expensive” as a way to discourage their use and extract “billions of dollars” in costs that the companies will “have to share with their shareholders.”

Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a leading consumer advocacy group in California, backs Bonta’s suit targeting oil and gas companies but doesn’t want to see any costs passed on to motorists.

“The money that would go into a fund to pay for climate mitigation would come from shareholders – they can take shareholder funds and designate them if they wanted to,” he told RealClearPolitics. “I think it’s totally doable.”

It’s hard to find an economist who agrees. In the mid-1990s, a pack of cigarettes cost less than $2 a pack. Today, it’s five times that amount – far outpacing inflation – an increase due to taxes and the cost passed along to consumers by tobacco companies to comply with the litigation that now inspires lawsuits against big oil.

Gasoline prices are already high in California because of extra taxes and the state’s stringent fuel standards, meaning that punishing oil companies will lead to an even greater exodus of refineries, creating more supply problems and raising prices even higher.

Separate from any price increase Bonta’s lawsuit could spur, analysts say drivers statewide could see gas prices spike as much as 65 cents a gallon if the California Air Resources Board approves new regulations. The board has conveniently put off voting on them until Nov. 8, three days after the election.

Like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and most progressive Democrats across the country, Bonta says fossil fuels have led to a destructive long-term change in weather patterns and that fighting their effects should be a top policy priority – even if that means higher energy prices in the decades-long near term and less consumer choice overall.

But there’s hardly a consensus in this country regarding how much of a priority lawmakers should place on addressing global warming – and the level of sacrifice consumers should be asked to make.

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released last year found a slim majority of respondents (53%) who said addressing climate change should be given priority even at the risk of slowing the economy. That included 80% of Democrats but only 54% of independents, while nearly three-quarters of Republicans said the economy should be given priority.

Another more recent survey found that although most Americans support climate reforms, it wasn’t driving their voting preferences. Yale polling data found that climate change ranked 19^th among 28 issues voters consider in deciding a presidential candidate.

Newsom’s messaging strategy that big oil is price-gouging customers has never been proven, but that hasn’t stopped him from lambasting the industry for high gas prices over the last several years and signing a bill that threatens refineries with up to $1 million in fines per day if they don’t stockpile fuel.

Even though California gas prices have decreased over the last year, they remain the highest in the country. Democrats worry the pain at the pump could hurt their election chances this November, so Newsom convened a special session to lay the blame on oil and gas producers.

While Republicans decried the move, some veteran Democrats in California considered it smart politics.

“It’s a major issue to California consumers, and since the California refineries seem to have the highest margins in the country, it’s a legitimate question to be asked – whether there’s some illegal behavior that goes on in that domain,” Bill Lockyer, a longtime Democratic politician who served as California’s attorney general, treasurer, and president pro tempore of the Senate, told RCP.

For his part, Bonta is focusing on California’s status as the leading player battling big oil. There are 30 other lawsuits filed by other cities and states (Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont). Still, that legal action doesn’t pack the same punch as the suit Bonta filed on behalf of California’s nearly 40 million consumers.

“We are the biggest geographic entity and biggest economy to sue these fossil fuel companies for this conduct. We think it’s a game-changer. We think it’s a massive, transformational moment in terms of accountability,” Bonta said at the time, adding that he hopes it “opens up the floodgates” for other states to join the fight.

Newsom Elevates Longtime Liberal Ally

Newsom may be leading California’s climate change charge, but Bonta is his top legal lieutenant and readily took on the role.

Bonta owes his position as attorney general to Newsom, who appointed him to the post in 2021, after President Biden tapped state Attorney General Xavier Becerra to serve as in his cabinet as Health and Human Services secretary.

Newsom was familiar with Bonta from his years as a deputy San Francisco city attorney, which overlapped with Newsom’s time as mayor and Kamala Harris’ years as district attorney.

Bonta, 52, comes by his liberal leanings naturally. He’s the son of civil rights activists who worked alongside Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to help unionize California’s largely Hispanic farmworkers in the Central Valley.

The first Asian-American or Pacific Islander to serve as California AG, Bonta was born in the Philippines but immigrated with his family to California when he was a few months old. He gained U.S. citizenship through his father, Warren Bonta, who is white and a native Californian. His mother, Cynthia, came to the United States on a boat in 1965, Bonta’s office tells RCP. s, She had graduated from Silliman University, a Protestant Christian university in the Philippines

The couple first met in California and served as missionaries in the Philippines, according to the Asian Journal. Bonta’s office declined to say whether they were Christian missionaries, describing the outreach work they did in the Philippines as “social justice.” When the family moved to California, the Bontas initially settled in Los Angeles, then headed north where they reportedly lived in a  trailer in Nuestra Senora Reina de Paz, where many farm workers lived and where Chavez established the headquarters of the United Farm Workers.

Later, the family settled in Sacramento, where Bonta attended a public high school, graduating as valedictorian. He went to Yale for his undergraduate and law degrees, clerking for Judge Alvin W. Thompson of the U.S. District Court of the District of Connecticut after graduation.

Bonta returned to California to work for four years as a litigation associate at the San Francisco law firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP, where he was part of a team that worked with the American Civil Liberties Union to institute new protocols to prevent racial profiling by the California Highway Patrol.

Bonta’s political rise began as a San Francisco deputy city attorney. In one of his cases, preschool teacher Kelly Medora accused a San Francisco Police Department officer of breaking her arm during a jaywalking incident. Bonta, representing the police department, agreed to a settlement of  $235,000 to resolve the case. It was the largest amount the city ever agreed to pay for police misconduct not involving a shooting.

Bonta then served a brief stint on the Alameda City Council before running for the State Assembly, representing the East Bay from 2012 until his appointment as attorney general.

As a legislator, he built a reputation as an unapologetic progressive who pushed bills to eliminate the use of cash bail – a measure the state’s voters overturned in 2020 – and to end California’s use of private prisons.

Republican Rep. Vince Fong is a longtime aide to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy who served with Bonta in the Assembly and then ran in a special election to fill McCarthy’s seat when he was ousted as speaker and decided to retire last year. He remembers Bonta as an ambitious, hard-working lawmaker but one with whom he constantly clashed on energy, water, and public safety issues.

 California voters, he said, have repeatedly rejected Bonta’s positions, voting to reinstate the cash bail system by an overwhelming majority to “ensure there is some accountability when it comes to holding criminals.”

“It’s just an example of many of his policies and Gavin Newsom’s policies being out of step with mainstream, average Californians,” Fong said.

Bonta also co-authored an unsuccessful constitutional amendment to repeal the death penalty and authored legislation aimed at ending a 1950s-era ban on members of the Communist Party serving in state government. The bill passed the Assembly but was later withdrawn.

Lockyer, who held the same East Bay Assembly seat as Bonta’s and also went on to become attorney general, recalled working with Bonta on overhauling the government workers’ pension system while serving as state treasurer.

“He could negotiate a very complicated issue with lots of entrenched stakeholders,” Lockyer told RealClearPolitics. “He figured out a path through a lot of potential barriers.”

Even before the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis, sparking the 2020 summer of riots and looting across the country, Bonta authored a bill requiring an independent review of police officers involved in shootings across California. Newsom signed it into law in September of 2020.

Bonta’s bold moves weren’t limited to the state legislature. Some have raised the ire of ethics watchdogs in a one-party state where self-dealing and cronyism are often overlooked. The same year, ethics watchdogs questioned Bonta’s creation of a nonprofit called the Bonta California Progress Foundation, which collected donations he requested from interest groups with business before him in the Assembly. The nonprofit was one of several that California state lawmakers have launched in the past decade.

According to CalMatters, Bonta’s organization is unusual because it’s affiliated with a single legislator rather than a caucus and “because of whom it has benefited besides needy students: nonprofits that, at the time, employed Bonta’s wife.”

Bonta met his wife, Mia Bonta, when they were freshmen at Yale. She was president of the Alameda Unified School District board before winning an Assembly seat representing Oakland. In 2018, Rob Bonta’s foundation gave $25,000 to Literacy Lab, a nonprofit where Mia Bonta was earning a $143,000 salary as its CEO, according to IRS tax records. Ethics watchdogs said the transfer is legal but raises conflict of interest concerns.

More recently, Bonta is facing scrutiny for soliciting $3.4 million from the California Energy Commission to fund a failed bio-diesel plant after the commission originally rejected the firm for the grant money. At the time Bonta secured the grant money, he was still in the Assembly, and the company, Viridis Fuels, was already being sued for allegedly defrauding investors in the venture and had no known track record in the bio-diesel industry.

A federal probe came to light in late June when the FBI raided Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao’s home. Within days of the raids, Bonta’s staff identified $155,000 in campaign contributions he had received from the bio-diesel firm’s owner and other interested parties and gave the funds to charities. A Bonta spokesman defended the arrangement, saying his district stood to benefit from the alternative fuels project through job creation and its environmentally safer solutions.

Yet the San Francisco Chronicle recently warned that questions about Bonta’s role in securing the $3.4 million grant, of which only $700,000 has been used so far, “could become a liability for Bonta as he weighs a run for governor in 2027.”

Bonta has said he’s considering  a run for governor but won’t announce his decision until after November. The attorney general’s office, arguably the second most powerful job in the state, is a reliable springboard to governor or a position in Washington – past occupants include former Gov. Jerry Brown, Kamala Harris, and Xavier Becerra.

Almost immediately after Newsom named Bonta to the strategic post, he was forced into election mode, having to win a full, four-year term in 2022, the following year. In one of his first acts on the job, Bonta signaled his priorities by expanding the state’s environmental justice enforcement unit, increasing the number of attorneys devoted to the issue from seven to 11.

When Bonta started his job in 2021, there was little talk about cracking down on rising crime, which was likely by design. A few months after his arrival, the state Justice Department released its notorious 2020 crime and homicide reports. Newsom and Becerra had left Bonta in the difficult position of defending California’s 31% jump in homicides in 2020, the deadliest year since 2007, with African Americans making up nearly one-third of the victims.

In 2022, two of Bonta’s allies on criminal justice reforms, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and Los Angeles County George Gascón, faced recall petition drives. San Francisco ended up ousting Boudin, whose left-wing lineage initially seemed like a perfect fit for the liberal bastion by the bay.

But Gascón survived, while Bonta, who faced a challenge from Republican defense attorney Nathan Hochman, easily won a full four-year term with 59% of the vote. Despite the big win, Boudin’s recall rattled the San Francisco Democratic establishment. Overnight, Bonta’s reputation as a criminal justice reformer became a political liability, not an asset. Over the last two years, as Republicans have blasted California over its spiraling crime, drug overdoses, and homelessness, the public has started demanding action from its top city officials and prosecutors.

 Bonta Changes Tune on Criminal Justice

Since his first days as AG, Bonta, who once stood firmly in the reformers’ camp, has been in the awkward position of sprinkling his speeches with tough-on-crime rhetoric while also trying to downplay the violent crime rates, which have risen each year both he and Newsom have been in office, according to the state’s own annual crime reports.

Public sentiment has swung so hard against leniency for criminals that polls show Hochman, who switched his political registration to “no party preference” last year to run against Gascón on a tough-on-crime platform, leading the liberal prosecutor by as much as 30 points.

Gascón’s endorsements from star Democrats like Newsom, Kamala Harris, and George Soros have entirely evaporated. Not only is Bonta no longer backing Gascón, but he’s also prosecuting one of Gascón’s top advisers for accessing confidential police records from her previous job working for the L.A. County sheriff.

The public furor over lenient prosecutions has grown so strong that Newsom has been forced to embrace tough-on-crime measures pushed by the Republican minority that would tear away at Proposition 47. Voters approved that now-notorious initiative a decade ago, but now many lawmakers and citizens alike blame it for the state’s retail theft epidemic that has caused so many big chains’ decisions to leave Oakland and downtown San Francisco.

The proposition, authored by Gascón, lowered retail theft felonies to misdemeanors if the total value of the goods stolen was below $950. Voters in November will decide the fate of an initiative designed to repeal most of it and increase drug and theft penalties – a reform Bonta does not support.

While Bonta’s reputation as California’s top cop is the weakest point on his resume, he’s been all too happy to change the subject by partnering with Newsom to prosecute a number of progressive pet causes.

Last fall, he sued a Catholic pro-life group and several of its crisis pregnancy centers, alleging that it was misleading pregnant women who have taken an abortion-inducing pill that it could be reversed. (Another anti-abortion community health clinic, the Culture of Life Family Services, is counter-suing, arguing that Bonta is unconstitutionally chilling the First Amendment rights of pro-life ministries.)

One month earlier, Bonta sued a conservative school district in Chino in an attempt to end a policy that requires schools to notify parents if their children change their gender identity. When another Southern California school district rejected curricula that included the late gay rights leader Harvey Milk over his sexual relationship with a juvenile, Bonta opened a civil rights investigation, and Newsom threatened to fine the district more than $1 million. The district backed away from its decision in the face of the threats that parents’ rights groups cast as tyrannical.

While Bonta aggressively targeted some conservative groups, he seems to share the contempt for big tech of many on the right. Bonta eagerly signed onto multi-state suits against Silicon Valley giants that provide thousands of jobs in California. He joined a lawsuit against Google over its advertising technology. And with 32 other states, he sued Meta (formerly Facebook), alleging that the company purposely created addictive and harmful social media platforms that it marketed to children.

As Bonta ponders whether to run for governor in 2026 when Newsom is term-limited out of the job, he’s angling to  play an elevated role in national politics no matter who wins the White House on Election Day.

If Harris emerges victorious, Bonta will be a natural ally to promote her civil rights and green agendas. Should Trump return to the White House, Bonta will be positioned to file dozens of suits against his administration and help Newsom resume his war of litigation against the new administration, elevating both Newsom’s and his own national profile ahead of the 2028 presidential election.

Becerra, who was elected attorney general in the wake of Trump’s 2016 election, filed more than 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration on everything from immigration to auto-emissions standards. The lawsuit against the oil and gas industry could play one of the biggest roles in forging Bonta’s future and political legacy.

Will Bonta’s War on Oil Help or Hurt His Political Ambitions?

Suing the oil industry is a polarizing move with significant political ramifications. If the effort is successful in forcing the industry into a multi-billion-dollar settlement, it could help Newsom and California out of a more than $46.8 budget deficit, a conspicuous blemish on the governor’s record that reinforces California’s national reputation as a profligate tax-and-spend haven.

If Bonta decides to run for governor, Lockyer said the lawsuit against oil and gas likely would help him more than hurt him with California voters. It’s been that way for two generations.

“Ken Cory, an assemblyman from Orange County, won [his race for] state controller in 1974, and his campaign slogan was ‘the man the oil companies feared the most,’” Lockyer said. “So great candidates have run against the oil industry a lot. I don’t think this hurts in any respect for Rob.”

But there are plenty of potential pitfalls, too. It’s hard to see how Californians can tolerate gas prices moving any higher, and some industry analysts are predicting a 60-cent-a-gallon spike in prices if California’s lawsuit against oil and gas succeeds. On top of gas taxes increases Democrats have already baked into current law, pain at the pump could cause a big voter backlash. Nor is California the only state that will be impacted by these lawsuits.

Newsom and Bonta, too, could be undermining their own long-term political ambitions if either man envisions Washington in their future. While going all-in on climate change may play well in California, it could be a liability in battleground states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania. Just ask Harris, who is now trailing Trump in both states that could be critical to her victory or defeat.

The swing states of Arizona and Nevada recently sent bipartisan letters from their governors warning Newsom that the new mandates on refineries he signed into law would create shortages and drive up prices in their states because 80% of their gasoline comes from California refineries.

“This agenda that Gavin’s trying to jam through the assembly and the Senate, and now Rob Bonta is promoting it on the legal end, it’s not only going to create real-world consequences and economic damage to California,” said Vince Fong. “It’s now going to ripple throughout the western United States.”