Republican officials from several US states, including Iowa and Missouri, are suing New York over a new state rule requiring "fuel suppliers" across the country to register with New York and report greenhouse gas emissions data. The authors argue this oversteps New York's authority under the US constitutional principle of federalism, whereby each state governs its own affairs, and effectively attempts to impose New York's climate policy on residents and businesses of other states who have no say in its laws.

The piece invokes Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis's description of states as "laboratories of democracy" to argue that New York cannot turn the whole country into its own regulatory testing ground. It states that New York's rule applies broadly to fuel suppliers nationwide, not just those operating within New York, and specifically mentions ethanol-related suppliers as being caught by the requirement, prompting the legal challenge described in the opinion piece.