Some compliance teams at US-listed companies are still waiting for the Securities and Exchange Commission to finalise its climate disclosure rule. They will be waiting forever. The rule the SEC adopted in March 2024 was voluntarily stayed before it ever took effect, the Commission withdrew its defence of the rule in March 2025, and the Eighth Circuit has held the case in abeyance since April 2025. The Commission has not rescinded the rule. The Commission is not defending it either. The rule sits in a legal twilight that the current administration shows no interest in resolving.

The compliance officer waiting for the federal regime to clarify is making a category error. The federal regime did clarify. It clarified by abdicating. The disclosure landscape that replaced it is not a vacuum. It is a mosaic of state-level statutes, international standards, SEC staff guidance that does the work the rule was supposed to do, and inter-agency memoranda that route enforcement around the paused rule. A US-listed company in 2026 has more disclosure obligations than it would have had if the SEC rule had simply taken effect. They are just distributed across more regimes.

The rule is paused. The disclosure landscape is not.

This piece is a playbook for the sustainability officer, general counsel, or chief financial officer of a US-listed company trying to figure out what disclosure regime they actually face in 2026. Six numbered moves. Each move with a rationale and a concrete action. The moves are sequenced from most urgent to most strategic.

Move 1. Stop waiting for the SEC. Plan as if the rule is gone.

The federal rule is in a state that lawyers call "abeyance" and everyone else calls limbo. The Eighth Circuit, after the SEC withdrew its defence, held the case in abeyance to promote judicial economy, with the pause remaining in effect until the SEC either renews its defence or reconsiders the rule through notice-and-comment rulemaking. The Commission has done neither. The majority of current Commissioners have publicly stated they believe the SEC lacked statutory authority to issue the rule in the first place. The most likely path forward is the rule being formally rescinded sometime in 2026 or 2027, possibly through a new notice-and-comment process designed to reach that outcome.

The action: build your 2026 climate disclosure programme on the assumption that no SEC rule will apply this year, next year, or in any planning horizon you can defend. If your scenario analysis still assumes federal mandatory disclosure as a base case, replace the base case. If your timeline for Scope 3 readiness was anchored to the SEC's now-stayed schedule, re-anchor it to the California schedule (Move 2). If your board reporting still describes the SEC rule as "delayed", change the language to "withdrawn from active defence". Words shape what the board prioritises.

This move is not about abandoning climate disclosure capacity. It is about admitting that the federal regime will not be the forcing function, and rebuilding the programme around the regimes that will.

Move 2. Map your California exposure. August 10, 2026 is closer than you think.

California Senate Bill 253, the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act, applies to US companies that do business in California and generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue. That is roughly 5,400 entities by the California Air Resources Board's own estimate, including a substantial fraction of US-listed companies with national footprints. On 26 February 2026, CARB adopted its initial regulations implementing SB 253 and the parallel SB 261. The first-year Scope 1 and Scope 2 reporting deadline is 10 August 2026.

That date is not theoretical. It is a regulatory deadline ninety days away as this piece publishes. Companies that meet the revenue threshold and have any operational footprint in California, anything from a sales office to a manufacturing facility to a fleet of delivery vehicles, are in scope.

The action, in order: 1. Run the revenue test. If you exceed $1 billion in annual revenue and have any California operational presence, you are likely in scope. CARB has indicated that "doing business in California" follows the state's Revenue and Taxation Code definition, which is broad. 2. Inventory your Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions data for fiscal year 2025. If you already report through CDP or under TCFD, the data probably exists. If you don't, the next ninety days are about getting it. 3. Identify your reporting platform of choice. CARB has not mandated a specific filing mechanism for 2026, but standardised templates and limited assurance requirements are coming in 2027. 4. Decide your Scope 3 posture for the 2027 reporting cycle. Scope 3 reporting begins in 2027 under SB 253 and the methodology is still being finalised through CARB's ongoing pre-rulemaking on organisational boundaries and GHG accounting methods. Building Scope 3 capacity in 2026 is the work you do now to make 2027 a reporting exercise rather than a building exercise.

A note on SB 261, the climate-related financial risk disclosure law. CARB has stated it will not enforce SB 261's January 2026 deadline due to a Ninth Circuit injunction in Chamber of Commerce v. Sanchez. Reporting is voluntary until the appeal is resolved. Companies should still prepare an SB 261 disclosure for the 2026 cycle, because voluntary reporting demonstrates good faith and because the injunction is unlikely to permanently kill the statute.

The rule is paused. The California deadline is not.

Move 3. Treat IFRS S2 as the international baseline, even where it does not apply to you.

The International Sustainability Standards Board's IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures standard is the de facto global baseline for climate reporting in 2026. As of April 2026, 28 jurisdictions have adopted the standard on a voluntary or mandatory basis, with another 12 planning to adopt. The list includes the UK, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, Brazil, and most other jurisdictions where a US-listed multinational does business.

The United States is not on the list. There is no federal mandate to report under IFRS S2 in the US. There is also no plausible scenario in which a US-listed company with a global footprint avoids IFRS S2 entirely, because the subsidiaries, the customers, the supply chain partners, and the investors will all be operating under IFRS S2 within two or three reporting cycles.

The action: pick IFRS S2 as your internal reporting backbone, even if no US regulator requires it. Three reasons.

First, IFRS S2 is the most internally coherent climate disclosure framework currently in operation. It was built on TCFD's four-pillar structure (governance, strategy, risk management, metrics and targets) and refined through extensive consultation. Compared to the SEC's withdrawn rule or California's still-being-built methodology, IFRS S2 is mature.

Second, when New York's Senate Bill 9072A or any other state-level mirror finally passes, it will likely accept IFRS S2 disclosures as satisfying its reporting requirements. New York's bill already references "widely used greenhouse gas accounting standards such as the GHG Protocol". California's CARB rulemaking similarly assumes alignment with established global frameworks. Building once to IFRS S2 lets you report many times.

Third, the ISSB issued targeted amendments to IFRS S2 in December 2025 that ease the financed emissions reporting burden for banks and asset managers. The standard is being maintained and adjusted in response to implementation friction. The SEC rule, by contrast, is being maintained by nobody.

Move 4. Read SEC staff guidance and enforcement signals, not the rule. The shadow rule lives there.

The SEC may not be defending its formal climate disclosure rule, but the agency continues to operate. Several recent moves are worth reading carefully as signals about how the Commission expects companies to behave on disclosure matters generally, even without a formal climate rule on the books.

The Commission rescinded its policy on settlement denials in May 2026, restoring the prior practice of allowing parties to settle enforcement actions without admitting wrongdoing. The signal: enforcement is becoming more transactional and less adversarial. For climate disclosure, this means a company that misstates its climate-related risk in an annual filing is more likely to face a negotiated settlement than a hostile enforcement action, but the underlying obligation to disclose material climate risk under Regulation S-K and Regulation S-X persists.

The Commission proposed amendments in May 2026 to its rules governing registered offerings and periodic reporting, designed to "increase efficiency, flexibility, and cost savings for public companies while maintaining robust investor protections". The phrase "robust investor protections" is doing more work than the headline suggests. Material climate risk is, in many cases, investor-protection material. The simplification proposal does not contemplate eliminating disclosure of material risk; it contemplates reducing the procedural burden of disclosing it. A company that decides material climate risk under this looser framework still has to disclose it.

The Commission and the National Futures Association signed a Memorandum of Understanding in May 2026 to harmonise regulatory coordination. The MOU is procedural, but it indicates the SEC is routing enforcement and information-sharing through partner agencies in a way that may not require a stand-alone climate rule to produce climate-relevant disclosure pressure.

The action: maintain a quarterly review of SEC staff bulletins, Commissioner speeches, and enforcement actions that touch climate-related disclosure, even though the formal rule is paused. The shadow rule is being written one staff guidance at a time. A compliance team that monitors only the formal rulebook will miss the shape of the actual regime.

Move 5. Build for New York, not just California. The state-level matrix is multiplying.

On 10 February 2026, the New York Senate passed Senate Bill 9072A, the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act, by a 40-22 vote. The bill is now under New York Assembly review. If enacted, it would apply to companies doing business in New York with annual revenue above $1 billion, would require Scope 1 and Scope 2 reporting from 2028 and Scope 3 reporting from 2029, and would authorise the Attorney General to bring civil actions with penalties of up to $100,000 per day for wilful non-compliance.

New York is not California. The thresholds are similar but the enforcement architecture is more aggressive. The Attorney General, not a specialised environmental agency, holds the enforcement authority. The penalty per day exceeds California's by an order of magnitude. The political coalition behind the bill in Albany is durable. The probability that some version of S9072A becomes law in 2026 or 2027 is high enough that compliance teams should plan for it.

Beyond New York, other state legislatures are advancing or considering similar measures. Illinois, New Jersey, and Washington State each have climate disclosure bills at various stages. The state-level disclosure matrix will be denser at the end of 2026 than it is at the start, and denser still in 2027.

The action: design your disclosure architecture to be jurisdiction-pluralist from the start. A single integrated climate report, built to IFRS S2 with state-specific addenda, is the operating model that scales as more states pass their own mandates. The alternative, a separate compliance build for each state, becomes unaffordable beyond three or four jurisdictions and impossible beyond six. The choice between integrated and fragmented compliance is made early. Make it now.

Move 6. Pick a framework before the regulators pick one for you.

The most damaging position for a US-listed company in 2026 is the position of having no climate disclosure framework selected, on the theory that federal uncertainty justifies waiting. The federal uncertainty is permanent. The state-level certainty is arriving on a 90-day clock. The international standard is mature and adopted in 28 jurisdictions. There is no scenario in which the company that picks a framework in 2026 ends up worse off than the company that waits.

The action, in priority order: 1. Adopt IFRS S2 as the internal climate reporting standard for the global enterprise. This is the most defensible single choice and the most jurisdiction-portable. 2. Layer California SB 253 / SB 261 specifics on top for the US filing entity, treating CARB requirements as the binding US deadline. 3. Prepare a New York compliance plan triggered to S9072A passage, capable of activation within 90 days. 4. Monitor SEC staff guidance quarterly and maintain documentation of how each material climate risk disclosure decision was made, in case enforcement posture changes. 5. Brief the board annually on the disclosure regime mosaic, with a one-page heat map of where the most binding obligations are.

The compliance officer waiting for the SEC to clarify the rule is waiting for a clarification that has already happened, just not in the form they expected. The clarification is that the federal regime will not be the forcing function in 2026, and probably not in 2027 either. The forcing function is California in August, plus a thickening matrix of state and international regimes that the company needs to address whether the SEC rule survives or not.

The rule is paused. The disclosure landscape is not.

The mosaic is the regime now. Treat it as the regime.