Waging Municipal Lawfare

Civitas Institute ^ | 10/23/2025 | Doug Peterson

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Recent lawsuits reveal a troubling pattern of cities working with private, fee-based lawyers. These cases lack proper legal backing, misuse courts to alter state and national policies, and create chaos when the outside legal bills are due. 

For example, in pro-fracking Pennsylvania, an upscale county near Philadelphia partnered with contingency fee lawyers to sue energy companies over climate change, an attempt to fundamentally transform a key business in the Keystone State. In public health, private lawyers exploited their municipal engagements to fight for years over their fees, thus delaying a multi-billion-dollar settlement to help victims of the opioid crisis. A Kansas county recently engaged a national law firm to bring a massive class action lawsuit that threatens to drive up the cost of food, household appliances, and medical supplies nationwide.

Courts must not afford local governments legal standing to pursue claims that are proper, indeed exclusive, to state and federal officials. Numerous private law firms have created a business model encouraging local governments to pursue big-ticket cases. State and federal judiciaries are not designed to regulate complicated areas of national policy through piecemeal litigation. The only real winners from the expansion of legal standing for local governments are the plaintiffs’ firms that land lucrative contingency fee contracts and arrangements to represent cities and counties.

The limited authority of local governments to initiate public interest litigation is a matter of law, not politics. Under the Constitution’s system of “dual sovereignty,” the states retained the power to act as a parens patriae, or “guardian of the people,” a British common law principle that authorizes sovereigns to sue on behalf of their residents. As the Supreme Court ruled in Missouri v. Illinois (1901): “if the health and comfort of the inhabitants of a state are threatened, the state is...”