Texas and Florida ESG Blacklists: How Billions Were Pulled

Texas, Florida, and West Virginia put a price on the ESG label. Between 2022 and 2024, those three states publicly removed billions of dollars from BlackRock and a handful of European banks, citing state laws that bar contracting with firms judged to be "boycotting" the fossil fuel industry. The combined effect was small relative to BlackRock's $11 trillion in assets under management. The reputational and political effect was not. By the time Larry Fink released his 2024 annual letter to CEOs, the term ESG had almost entirely disappeared from BlackRock's external messaging.

Key Findings

Texas Senate Bill 13, signed in 2021, required the state Comptroller to maintain a public list of financial companies that "boycott energy companies." The first list was published August 24, 2022.
The original list named ten firms: BlackRock, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Danske Bank, Jupiter Fund Management, Nordea Bank, Schroders, Svenska Handelsbanken, Swedbank, and UBS Group. Nearly 350 investment funds were flagged at the same time.
Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis announced in December 2022 that the state would divest about $2 billion from BlackRock. The Treasury froze roughly $1.43 billion in long-term securities and pulled about $600 million from short-term overnight investments.
West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore moved first, in January 2022, dropping BlackRock money market funds from a roughly $8 billion state operating pool. SB 262 later authorized a formal restricted-firms list that included BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.
The Texas Permanent School Fund pulled $8.5 billion from BlackRock in March 2024. Aaron Kinsey, chair of the State Board of Education, cited BlackRock's "dominant and persistent leadership in the ESG movement" as the reason.
Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar updated the list in November 2023, adding five firms and removing Credit Suisse after its acquisition by UBS.
Kentucky and Oklahoma passed companion laws in 2022. Arkansas, Indiana, and Louisiana followed in 2023. Missouri pursued the same playbook through securities-disclosure rules rather than divestment statutes.

What is the Texas ESG blacklist?

It is a list of asset managers and banks that, in the judgment of the Texas Comptroller, refuse to do business with oil, gas, and coal companies for reasons other than ordinary financial analysis. Texas Senate Bill 13 (2021) added Chapter 809 to the Government Code and required the Comptroller to publish and maintain the list. State governmental entities, including the Permanent School Fund, the Teacher Retirement System, the Employees Retirement System, and university endowments, are then directed to divest from listed companies unless doing so would violate fiduciary duty.

The mechanism is simple. A firm gets named. State pension boards and other public funds receive notice. They have a defined window to sell. Future state contracts go elsewhere.

The first published list, dated August 24, 2022, named BlackRock plus nine European institutions. BlackRock was the only US firm on it. Comptroller Glenn Hegar's stated framing was that the listed companies "place social agenda over fiduciary duty." BlackRock responded that it does not boycott fossil fuels and pointed to roughly $100 billion in Texas energy investments held on behalf of its clients. Both statements can be true at the same time. The list is not about the average holding. It is about what the firm says publicly about climate, what coalitions it joins, and which proxy votes it casts.

An oil pumpjack at sunset in a West Texas field — Texas produces more crude oil than any other US state. Senate Bill 13 was written by legislators from districts where oil and gas employment is the largest line item in the local economy. The political logic was direct. *Photo: Pixabay via Pexels. Pexels License.*

How much money has actually moved?

The headline numbers, in chronological order:

January 2022, West Virginia. Treasurer Riley Moore drops BlackRock from a roughly $8 billion state operating pool. He frames it as a fiduciary decision rather than a political one and immediately starts building a coalition of state financial officers willing to do the same.
December 2022, Florida. CFO Jimmy Patronis announces a $2 billion divestment from BlackRock. The Treasury freezes about $1.43 billion in long-term securities and pulls about $600 million from short-term overnight investment. Patronis's stated reason is that he does not trust BlackRock's "ability to deliver" given its public ESG positioning.
August 2022 onward, Texas. State entities receive notice to divest from listed firms. The Teacher Retirement System of Texas and the Employees Retirement System take a slower approach than the Permanent School Fund, citing fiduciary concerns over forced sales.
March 2024, Texas. Aaron Kinsey, chair of the State Board of Education, terminates BlackRock's management of approximately $8.5 billion in Permanent School Fund assets. BlackRock calls the move "unilateral and arbitrary." Kinsey's own staff reportedly warns of higher fees and lower returns from the transfer. The decision goes through anyway.

The aggregate from those three actions alone is roughly $18.5 billion. Other state-level moves (West Virginia's continued divestments, smaller actions in Louisiana and Oklahoma, the slower drawdowns inside other Texas pension funds) push the total higher, but the precise aggregate depends on how you count overlapping mandates and whether you include holdings that were repositioned rather than fully terminated. The honest figure is "tens of billions, with $18.5B publicly documented from named transactions."

That is not a portfolio-threatening number for an $11 trillion manager. It is, however, a number that comes with sustained press coverage, sustained political pressure, and the implied threat that more state legislatures will pass similar laws if the trend continues.

Which states have similar laws?

The state-level anti-ESG legislation tracker grew quickly between 2021 and 2024. Verified examples with year of passage:

Texas: SB 13 (2021). Government Code Chapter 809. Mandatory divestment from listed firms.
West Virginia: SB 262 (2022). Authorizes the Treasurer to publish a restricted-firms list and bar state banking contracts.
Kentucky: SB 205 (2022). Requires the State Treasurer to publish a list of financial companies engaged in energy boycotts.
Oklahoma: Energy Discrimination Elimination Act (2022). Same structural pattern: published list, divestment mandate, contracting restrictions.
Indiana: HB 1008 (2023). Restricts public retirement system investments with managers that consider ESG factors in ways that subordinate financial return.
Arkansas: HB 1307 (2023). Bans state contracts with companies that boycott energy, fossil fuels, firearms, or ammunition industries.
Louisiana: HCR 70 (2023) and earlier divestment actions by Treasurer John Schroder, who pulled $794 million from BlackRock in October 2022.
Missouri: Pursued securities-rule disclosure requirements rather than divestment statutes, with limited statutory wins.

The legislation is not uniform. Some statutes require divestment. Others restrict contracting. A few combine both. Several have been challenged in court, with mixed results: an Oklahoma judge issued a preliminary injunction in 2024 blocking enforcement of the EDEA against one pension fund, and other suits remain pending. The legal exposure has not slowed new state-level proposals.

A state capitol building dome at dusk with American flag — State financial officers (treasurers, comptrollers, CFOs) have become the operational tip of the anti-ESG movement. They control where state operating cash sits, which firms manage public pension assets, and which banks underwrite municipal bonds. That gives them direct power with no need to wait for federal action. *Photo: Pixabay via Pexels. Pexels License.*

How are asset managers responding?

Three patterns, all visible by late 2024.

First, language change. BlackRock's 2024 annual letter to CEOs dropped the word ESG almost entirely. Larry Fink's earlier letters had used the term as a load-bearing concept. By 2024 the same firm preferred "energy pragmatism" and "transition finance," language that says less and commits to less. The shift is documented in BlackRock's January 2025 exit from NZAM, which BlackRock framed as resolving "confusion about BlackRock's stance on ESG investing." The confusion was strategic.

Second, coalition exits. State Street's US business left the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative in November 2025. Vanguard had already left in December 2022. JPMorgan Asset Management exited Climate Action 100+ in February 2024, the same week State Street did. The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) restructured in late 2024 to relax membership requirements. None of these decisions were made for climate-related reasons. They were made because the political cost of membership exceeded the reputational benefit.

Third, defensive positioning in marketing. BlackRock filed an amicus brief in a Texas anti-ESG suit. The firm published a series of statements emphasizing its substantial fossil fuel investments. It quietly removed the "ESG integration" label from several US-domiciled fund prospectuses, replacing it with risk-management language. The underlying investment process did not change. The wrapper did.

The exterior of a modern glass-walled financial services tower in midtown Manhattan — BlackRock manages roughly $11 trillion in client assets. Even an $18 billion combined state divestment is a rounding error on the balance sheet. The damage was not financial. It was the establishment of a precedent that state-level officials could, and would, attach a public cost to the ESG label. *Photo: Sean Pollock via Unsplash. Unsplash License.*

What it tells you about the model

Two things, both useful to keep in mind when reading any future "asset manager commits to X" headline.

The first is that voluntary coalition membership is reversible at the speed of political weather. NZAM, Climate Action 100+, GFANZ, the Principles for Responsible Investment all rose during a period when joining looked like cost-free reputational lift. As soon as joining cost something measurable (lost state contracts, hostile congressional letters, public list designations), membership thinned. The commitment was always priced. The price just changed.

The second is that the state financial officer is now a real veto point in US corporate behavior. State pension funds and state operating cash are large enough that being excluded from a meaningful slice of them affects fee revenue, asset growth, and the political environment for future regulation. A firm that ignores this constituency loses contracts. A firm that placates it loses credibility with the European ESG client base it spent a decade cultivating. Most large managers are now trying to do both, which is producing the muddled public posture documented in Net Zero Theater and the broader ESG Industrial Complex.

What you should not expect is a clean reversal. The same firms that left NZAM still maintain ESG-labeled fund lineups for European clients, still publish stewardship reports listing climate as a priority engagement theme, and still report Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions targets for their corporate operations. The retreat is in US-facing messaging and US-facing coalition memberships. The product line, where the fees live, has been quietly repositioned rather than dismantled. That is the next thing to watch.

The WokeCorp assessment

The commitment. The article documents BlackRock's pre-2024 ESG commitments under Larry Fink's annual CEO letters and NZAM membership, contrasted with the firm's later defensive positioning emphasizing substantial fossil fuel investments and removal of the "ESG integration" label from several US-domiciled fund prospectuses.

The outcomes. Texas Comptroller's first list (August 24, 2022) named BlackRock plus nine European institutions. State Street's US business exited NZAM in November 2025; JPMorgan Asset Management exited Climate Action 100+ in February 2024.

The core question. State anti-ESG laws created a new class of regulated investment decision: the politically mandated exclusion. The stated rationale is fiduciary duty, but the legal obligation now runs to a political determination of which investment criteria are permissible. That's a different animal from traditional fiduciary law.

Compare with BlackRock's January 2025 Exit from Net Zero Asset Managers.

Sources

Verified May 2026.

Texas Comptroller, "Glenn Hegar Announces List of Financial Companies that Boycott Energy Companies," August 24, 2022.
Texas Comptroller, "Update to List of Financial Companies that Boycott Energy Companies," November 1, 2023.
Texas Comptroller, Divestment Statute Lists page, comptroller.texas.gov/purchasing/publications/divestment.php.
Texas Tribune, "Texas bans financial companies from doing business with state agencies," August 24, 2022.
CNBC, "Texas accuses 10 financial companies, including BlackRock, of 'boycotting' energy companies," August 25, 2022.
Bloomberg, "Texas School Fund Pulls $8.5 Billion Investment From BlackRock," March 19, 2024.
ESG Dive, "Texas schools fund pulls $8.5B from BlackRock over ESG," March 2024.
Institutional Investor, "West Virginia Treasury Drops BlackRock Over Stance on Climate Risk."
The Daily Signal, "Florida's CFO to Divest $2B in Investments," December 1, 2022.
BlackRock public statements responding to state divestment actions, 2022 to 2024.