On Friday, the United States House of Representatives passed the Inflation Reduction Act, clearing the way for President Biden to imminently sign the legislation, which passed the Senate last week, into law.

On September 18th, New Jersey’s Democratic Governor Phil Murphy signed a “first-of-its-kind” environmental justice law that establishes permitting requirements for facilities looking to operate in the state’s “overburdened communities”. The law seeks to protect low-income and minority communities from disproportionate exposure to environmental harm.

On June 23, 2020, the US Department of Labor proposed regulations to prohibit private industry pension plans, governed under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), from investing in ESG investment vehicles if doing so would prioritize non-financial objectives over purely financial ones (i.e., increasing returns for plan beneficiaries).