On May 29, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rescinding its 2024 climate disclosure rules in their entirety, citing lack of statutory authority. Three months earlier and a continent away in scope, the California Air Resources Board did the opposite: on February 26, 2026, it approved the Initial Regulation implementing SB 253, locking in an August 10, 2026 deadline for the first wave of companies to report Scope 1 and 2 emissions. The federal government is stepping back from climate disclosure just as California, New York, and Canada's own standards board step forward, each on a different clock, with different thresholds, and no sign of convergence.
For ESG and sustainable finance teams covering North America, this divergence is now the whole game. A single multinational doing business in the United States and Canada can face a proposed federal rescission, an active state mandate, a state law frozen by an appeals court, and a voluntary national standard, all addressing overlapping climate risk disclosure, all at once. Tracking any one of these in isolation misses the pattern.
Is the SEC climate disclosure rule dead?
Not yet, and that distinction matters for compliance planning. The SEC's March 2024 climate rule, which would have required GHG emissions and climate risk disclosure in registration statements and annual reports, was stayed by the Commission itself on April 4, 2024 pending litigation before the Eighth Circuit. After the Commission voted on March 27, 2025 to stop defending the rule, the Eighth Circuit held the case in abeyance on September 12, 2025, effectively telling the SEC to decide the rule's fate through rulemaking rather than litigation. On May 29, 2026, the SEC did exactly that, proposing full rescission under Release No. 33-11421, published in the Federal Register on June 3, 2026, with the public comment period closing August 3, 2026.
Until that rulemaking concludes, the rule remains formally on the books, stayed but not repealed. Companies that assumed the March 2025 non-defense vote ended the matter have already had thirteen months to reconsider that assumption; the same caution applies now. A rescission proposal is not a rescission.
What is actually enforceable under California's climate laws right now?
Two different answers for two different statutes. SB 253, the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act, is fully in force: CARB's February 26, 2026 Initial Regulation confirmed the August 10, 2026 deadline for Scope 1 and 2 emissions reporting from entities with more than $1 billion in revenue doing business in California, with Scope 3 reporting following in 2027. CARB's December 5, 2024 enforcement notice already lets companies that were not collecting emissions data at that time file a letter explaining why, rather than a full report, for this first cycle.
SB 261, the Climate-Related Financial Risk Act, is a different story. On November 18, 2025, the Ninth Circuit granted an injunction in Chamber of Commerce v. Sanchez, blocking CARB from enforcing SB 261's original January 1, 2026 reporting deadline while the law's First Amendment compelled-speech challenge is on appeal. The panel heard oral argument on January 9, 2026 and, as of this writing, has issued no ruling. CARB's December 1, 2025 enforcement advisory confirmed that SB 261 reporting is voluntary for now, with roughly 50 companies having filed reports to the public docket anyway. SB 253 was not part of the injunction and keeps its own deadline regardless of how the SB 261 appeal resolves.
| Regime | Status as of mid-2026 | Key date |
|---|---|---|
| SEC Climate Disclosure Rule | Stayed; rescission proposed | Comments due August 3, 2026 |
| California SB 253 (GHG reporting) | In force, not enjoined | Scope 1+2 due August 10, 2026 |
| California SB 261 (financial risk) | Enjoined pending Ninth Circuit ruling | Reporting voluntary until decision |
| New York S9072A (CDAA) | Passed Senate, pending Assembly | First reporting year 2027 if enacted |
| Canada CSDS 1 and 2 (CSSB) | In force, voluntary | Scope 3 transition relief ends 2028 |
Are other states following California, or is New York's bill an outlier?
Several states have tried and stalled, which makes New York's progress notable. New York's Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act, S9072A, passed the State Senate on February 10, 2026 and is now sitting with the Assembly Codes Committee; if enacted, it would apply to entities with over $1 billion in revenue, with Scope 1 and 2 reporting beginning in 2027 and Scope 3 in 2028, penalties up to $500,000 per year. Illinois introduced its own Climate Corporate Accountability Act (HB 3673) in February 2025, but it stalled in the House Rules Committee and was not reintroduced for the 2026 session. Colorado's HB 25-1119 failed a committee vote in 2025 and likewise was not reintroduced. New Jersey's S4117 remains stuck in the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee.
New York is also moving on two adjacent fronts that a compliance team tracking only emissions disclosure would miss: the Climate-Related Financial Risk Disclosure Act (S3697A), which would require biennial TCFD-aligned reporting from entities over $500 million in revenue starting 2028, and the Climate Change Superfund Act, signed December 26, 2024, which requires large fossil fuel companies to pay into a state fund for climate adaptation costs, with the first annual payment due September 30, 2026. The Superfund Act is separately being challenged in federal court by a 22-state coalition and by the US Chamber of Commerce on preemption grounds, litigation that is still active in the Northern District of New York.
How does the CSSB's Canadian sustainability standard actually work?
Canada took the standard-setting route rather than the direct-legislation route California and New York chose. The Canadian Sustainability Standards Board issued CSDS 1 and CSDS 2, its IFRS S1 and S2-aligned general and climate disclosure standards, on December 18, 2024, effective for annual reporting periods beginning January 1, 2025. Adoption remains voluntary in the sense that no federal statute mandates it, but the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions has effectively made climate risk disclosure mandatory for the largest regulated entities through Guideline B-15, which took effect for domestic systemically important banks and internationally active insurance groups in fiscal year 2024 and extended to all other in-scope federally regulated financial institutions in fiscal year 2025.
Companies applying CSDS 2 get a genuine concession: a three-year transitional relief on Scope 3 GHG disclosure and quantitative climate scenario analysis, running out January 1, 2028. That relief window is closing faster than many finance teams have planned for, particularly those still building Scope 3 data pipelines from scratch.
What changed in Canada's anti-greenwashing rules this year?
A real recalibration, not a repeal. Bill C-59's 2024 amendments to the Competition Act required that environmental claims about a business or business activity be substantiated "in accordance with internationally recognized methodology," a standard companies and their counsel found nearly impossible to apply consistently, and opened a private right of action before the Competition Tribunal. Bill C-15, which received Royal Assent on March 26, 2026, removed the internationally-recognized-methodology requirement for business-activity claims (product-level claims still need an adequate and proper test under the unchanged section 74.01(1)(b.1)) and eliminated private parties' ability to bring business-activity greenwashing claims directly to the Tribunal.
The Competition Bureau keeps full authority to investigate and prosecute both business-level and product-level claims regardless of the amendment, and its June 2025 enforcement guidance on environmental claims remains the operative reference pending an update to reflect Bill C-15. Companies that read the amendment as a green light to loosen substantiation practices are misreading it: the standard for adequate and proper substantiation did not disappear, only the specific internationally-recognized-methodology test for one category of claim.
What does the EU's CSRD Omnibus mean for North American companies?
Fewer North American companies are now in scope, but the ones still caught face a firmer 2029 deadline. The Omnibus I Directive, formally adopted February 24, 2026, raised the CSRD threshold for non-EU ultimate parent companies to more than 450 million euros in net turnover generated in the EU for each of the last two consecutive financial years, combined with an EU subsidiary or branch generating more than 200 million euros in net turnover in the preceding year. Companies clearing both thresholds report for financial year 2028, filed in 2029, under EFRAG's new non-EU sustainability reporting standards, which were opened for consultation between July and October 2026. US companies below the raised thresholds that had been preparing wave 4 CSRD compliance can stand that work down, at least for now; those above it have gained a reporting-year but should not assume the simplified N-ESRS will track the baseline ESRS line by line.
What should a North American ESG compliance team actually monitor?
Not a single regulator's calendar, but the interaction between four moving parts: the SEC's rescission rulemaking (comments close August 3, 2026), California's split status between SB 253's firm August 10 deadline and SB 261's suspended one, New York's three separate bills moving at different speeds through Albany, and Canada's voluntary-but-effectively-mandatory CSSB standards for regulated financial institutions. A company that reports under CSDS 2 in Canada, prepares for SB 253 in California, and watches the SEC rulemaking from the sidelines is not being inconsistent, it is responding rationally to three genuinely different legal postures in the same year.
Obsidian tracks each of these regimes at the jurisdiction level, from the SEC's Federal Register filings to CARB's enforcement advisories and the Ninth Circuit's docket in Chamber of Commerce v. Sanchez, so a change in any one of them surfaces without waiting for a quarterly client alert. Teams juggling SEC, California, New York, and Canadian obligations at once can set up per-jurisdiction monitoring that flags deadline and litigation status changes as they are published. For teams that need a direct answer to a specific question, such as whether SB 261 enforcement has resumed or whether New York's S9072A has cleared committee, the AI companion answers from Obsidian's verified regulatory database rather than a cached summary, and technical teams can pull the same underlying data through the MCP integration. With a Ninth Circuit ruling on SB 261 possible at any time and the SEC's comment period closing in August, the next quarter is unlikely to leave this list of open questions unchanged.