SEC Has Broad Power to Compel Risk Disclosures, Lawmakers Argue

The SEC has the authority to label a range of risks to companies’ bottom lines—from computer bugs to pollution—worthy of disclosure to investors, Democratic lawmakers and former agency officials argued in legal briefs Thursday defending the agency’s climate disclosure rules.

Climate change poses clear and present risks to companies, similar to those from the Y2K computer glitches that never arrived at the turn of the century, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has the power to ask companies to report related information such as emissions, four congressional Democrats said in a legal brief filed with US Court of Appeals for ...