Justice Antonin Scalia’s son, Eugene, who served as President Trump’s Secretary of Labor, is one of the lawyers from Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher who have filed a lawsuit against the NY City pension fund on behalf of a fake front group called Americans for Fair Treatment (remember our rule that the more patriotic and bland the name, the more likely the group is funded by the opposite). Americans for Fair Treatment is a far-right anti-union group that encourages workers to stop paying union dues or quit their unions. It is an  associate member of the State Policy Network, which is one of its funders. Other contributors include “the ATM for the far right,” Donor’s Trust, and, oddly, Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund. They have requested a jury trial.

The complaint alleges “NYCERS’s and TRS’s Boards of Trustees voted to divest their Plans of all of their holdings in securities related to fossil fuel companies, in order to advance environmental goals unrelated to the financial health of the Plans. BERS’s trustees followed suit shortly thereafter. These actions represented the culmination of a three-year pressure campaign mounted by public officials and other activists. By divesting, the Trustees chose to withdraw indiscriminately all of their investments in any publicly traded fossil fuel security, a practice which has no basis in sound investment strategy.”

We trust that the discovery process and depositions will reveal more about the real sources and resources behind this litigation and the extensive, quantifiable risk-reward analysis that underlies the pension fund’s investment decisions.