These days, if you’re interested in keeping pace with sustainability-related regulations in the United States, it might be helpful to have a law degree because all the action is happening in courtrooms.
Remember the climate disclosure rules finalized by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in March 2024? They quickly ended up in court, and in March 2025, after the Trump administration took over, the SEC announced it would not defend the rules in court. “The Rule is deeply flawed and could inflict significant harm on the capital markets and our economy,” acting SEC Chair Mark Uyeda said in a statement at the time.
But the saga continues.
As Sara Dewey and Sarah Hart-Curran from the Environmental & Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School highlight in an October 2025 blog post:
Under the Trump administration, the [SEC] has declined to defend the rule, though it has taken no steps to rescind it despite stating that the majority of current Commissioners believe SEC lacked statutory authority to promulgate the rule. In July 2025, the SEC announced the unusual step of asking the Eighth Circuit to make a legal decision about the rule. The Eighth Circuit rejected the administration’s request in September, stating that the case will be held in abeyance until the administration reconsiders the final rule or renews its defense.
Looking ahead, we will be watching to see how the Commission responds to the court and whether it takes steps to review or rescind the rule… As this case proceeds, we will also track reporting requirements from the European Union and California, which are leading the way for corporate climate disclosure.
Speaking of California, as reported by Rachel Frazin in The Hill last week, “A federal appeals court on Tuesday [November 18, 2025] halted a California law requiring companies to disclose the risks that climate change poses to their business. The Ninth Circuit issued a motion holding up the enforcement of California’s Senate Bill 261 while the case against it plays out [in court]. That law would have required companies to prepare a report on their climate-related financial risks by Jan. 1 [2026].”
As of now, a related bill, California Senate Bill 253, is still scheduled to take effect next year. This law will require companies with over $1 billion in revenues that do business in the state to disclose all greenhouse-gas emissions associated with their operations, including Scope 3 emissions. Disclosure of Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions will begin in 2026, and Scope 3 emissions will begin in 2027.
Looking to Europe, laws such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) with its Digital Product Passport, and the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) impose detailed reporting, traceability, and supply chain due-diligence requirements, with mandatory disclosures on emissions, human-rights risks, and product origins. These rules are already in force or entering phased implementation, with increasingly strict obligations through 2030.
In short, the EU is moving toward mandatory, comprehensive sustainability governance, while the U.S. is trending toward voluntary, market-driven, and state-specific approaches. This regulatory divergence is adding complexity and challenges for multinational supply chain and logistics organizations.
As I highlighted in a February 2022 post, “The Difficulty Of Measuring Scope 3 Emissions,” members of our Indago supply chain research community — who are all supply chain and logistics executives from manufacturing, retail, and distribution companies — said that accurately calculating and disclosing the greenhouse-gas emissions of their supply chain operations would be “Extremely” or “Very” difficult. As one Indago executive commented at the time:
“In the white towers of government bodies, this makes complete sense and is viewed as a rational step by lawmakers who live there. In the real world, where suppliers are constantly changing and carbon emissions data is scant, this makes absolutely no sense and is impracticable in every way.”
Has complying with these regulations — particularly those focused on measuring and reporting Scope 3 emissions — gotten any easier?
Not really. Most companies still lack meaningful visibility beyond their Tier 1 suppliers (see my recent post, “Trust: A Critical Link in ESG Compliance”). On the flip side, I’m increasingly bullish that rising market awareness and adoption of Supply Chain Operating Networks will help close this gap by enabling more efficient, scalable collection and reporting of emissions data across the end-to-end supply chain.
In the end, whether these rules move forward, get rewritten, or stall in court, the message to supply chain leaders remains the same: you can’t manage what you can’t see. The regulatory landscape may be noisy and unpredictable, but that’s all the more reason to stay focused on what you can control — improving visibility, strengthening collaboration, and modernizing the systems that support both. Scope 3 may be the hardest compliance requirement, but companies that invest now in better data and more connected operating networks will be in a much stronger position when the dust settles. Regulations will continue to shift; the need for end-to-end visibility won’t.
