When California sued the nation’s largest oil companies in 2023 for allegedly causing global warming, the state’s attorney general Rob Bonta (D.) vowed to “fight tirelessly on behalf of all Californians.” But Bonta quickly awarded a lucrative million-dollar contract to a liberal law firm to represent California in the case and do the fighting for him.
That outside law firm, the San Francisco-based Lieff Cabraser, has for years been politically connected to high-profile Democrats, including Bonta and, according to state and federal disclosures reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, has given large campaign donations almost exclusively to Democratic candidates.
In 2024 alone, firm partner Elizabeth Cabraser gave $620,000 to former vice president Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign and another $110,900 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Lieff Cabraser also donated $50,000 to the Democratic Attorneys General Association in both 2023 and 2024. Bonta has served as a member of the group’s executive committee since 2023.
Overall, since 2020, Lieff Cabraser’s attorneys have donated more than $5 million to Democrats nationwide and $88,760 to Democratic campaigns in California while the firm itself has given more than $200,000 to Democrats nationwide and $72,700 to Democrats in California. The firm didn’t make any contributions to Republicans during that time period, state and federal election data show. The firm boasts other ties to Democrats as well, authoring a Supreme Court amicus brief on behalf of several Senate Democrats in 2021, for example.
Lieff Cabraser’s political activity raises questions about whether Bonta hired the firm based on merit or because of its extensive ties to his party. The firm has little experience with such climate litigation. Bonta has already hired Sher Edling, another San Francisco-based law firm, which has far more experience with the litigation.
While Lieff Cabraser has previously litigated environmental cases—it has represented victims of oil spills and toxic water supply exposures—it has never represented a state or city in a case like California’s. The state’s landmark lawsuit is part of a trend based on a novel interpretation of the law that has emerged in recent years where local jurisdictions have taken oil companies to court accusing them of knowingly selling products that cause global warming.
Sher Edling has largely spearheaded the trend. While he chose not to hire Sher Edling at first, earlier this year Bonta quietly hired Sher Edling as co-counsel in the case, according to court documents reviewed by the Free Beacon.
Bonta’s office explained that it hired Sher Edling because the firm has “unique expertise in representing governments in high stakes climate deception litigation” and “unparalleled knowledge, not available within the civil service or at any other law firm.”
Under the contract Bonta’s office awarded Lieff Cabraser in September 2023, the firm was paid up to $1.5 million over the course of its first 10 months litigating the case. The contract was renewed and Lieff Cabraser remains on the case, meaning it has likely earned far more than that original figure.
The contract shows that the state agreed to pay Lieff Cabraser’s individual partners as much as $1,241 per hour and its associates as much as $544 per hour to work on the case.
Sher Edling’s attorneys, on the other hand, are paid between $175 and $625 per hour. The state’s contract with Sher Edling extends through December 2026.
Those details were revealed after the California Attorneys Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Officers in State Employment (CASE), the California labor union that represents rank-and-file civil service employees, sued Bonta’s office in February for outsourcing the litigation to outside law firms. The union has argued the state’s in-house attorneys can handle the case without Lieff Cabraser or Sher Edling.
“Impermissible use of outside counsel will not be tolerated,” CASE president Timothy O’Connor told the Free Beacon in an interview. “We will take every and all legal action available to us.”
“What’s ironic is we’re at a claimed budget crisis right now, yet the state has tons of money to throw out on outside counsel,” he added. “I don’t know how to reconcile that.”
Bonta’s office and Lieff Cabraser did not respond to requests for comment.
“This is a perfect encapsulation of how left-wing officials, especially liberal state attorneys general, have prioritized the shady trial lawyer pipeline,” O.H. Skinner, the executive director of Alliance for Consumers (AFC) and former Arizona solicitor general, told the Free Beacon.
AFC published a report earlier this year showing that Democratic politicians regularly hand out lucrative public contracts to trial lawyers who then give millions of dollars to Democratic campaigns. Lieff Cabraser is featured in the report.
“Here you have California choosing a firm that gives millions in federal donations, with a 100 percent ratio going to Democrat candidates and aligned committees, for a lawsuit designed to reshape our national economy and make it look like the nightmare California has already created for itself,” Skinner added.
Overall, Democratic prosecutors in nine states, more than a dozen cities and counties, and Washington, D.C., which altogether are home to more than 25 percent of Americans, have filed cases against oil companies that mirror California’s. Critics say it is a largely coordinated effort that is designed to effectively dismantle the industry and lay the groundwork for an economy-wide green energy transition.
Oil companies have argued that federal law alone, not local and state claims, can be used to regulate nationwide emissions. If the courts rule against them, they may be liable to pay hundreds of millions of dollars, or even billions of dollars, in climate damages.
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