Is Fossil Fuel Divestment a Legal Responsibility?
By: Rohan Upadhyay
Photo by American Public Power Association on Unsplash
Dores Divest, alongside the Climate Defense Project, recently filed a legal complaint to Tennessee’s attorney general to compel Vanderbilt’s Board of Trust to divest from fossil fuels. Similar complaints came from students at Princeton, MIT, Stanford and Yale to their respective attorney generals.
The complaint argues that:
“Under the Tennessee Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, the Board of Trust has a fiduciary duty to invest with… charitable purposes… [which] distinguishes non-profit institutions from other investors. It is problematic, then, that the Board… has invested… in the fossil fuel industry — raising a serious question of conflicts of interest… as wel...