A top lawyer for Exxon Mobil says the company — named in more than two dozen lawsuits from local governments seeking compensation for climate change — has no intention of losing the battle against what he called “absolutely relentless” opponents.
The remarks Friday by Justin Anderson, Exxon’s assistant general counsel for litigation, come as the oil and gas industry mounts its third effort in a year to persuade the Supreme Court to reject climate lawsuits brought by states and localities across the country.
“I didn’t just move my family to Texas from the East Coast to have a bunch of activists and ambitious politicians bankrupt the company,” Anderson said during the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington. “We are not going to lose this fight.”
Officials in Boulder, Colorado, are scheduled Monday to deliver a rebuttal to the oil industry’s Supreme Court push. The justices could decide by the close of the year whether they will get involved.
Anderson, who joined Exxon in 2023 after years of representing the Houston-based company as outside counsel in climate litigation, said defeating the liability lawsuits “is a big priority not just for Exxon Mobil, but for the entire industry.”
The former Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison partner said his appointment underscores the gravity of the situation.
“When you consider who’s running Exxon Mobil’s litigation department, it’s the outside counsel who handled climate change,” he said. “It’s not the guy who handled royalties or international arbitration or any of the other legal disputes that are so important to our oil and gas industry.”
Anderson said the climate liability cases did not emerge “organically” but are well-organized and well-funded by activists who began talking about the concept more than a decade ago. He called his opponents “absolutely relentless,” noting that activists in some states have pushed for “climate Superfund” laws that seek to force energy companies to pay the cost of adapting to rising temperatures.
“The position is, well, we keep losing in court, so we’ll pass a law that says you have to pay, and then you can challenge it afterwards,” he said of activists’ efforts. “It’s relentless. It’s ridiculous.”
Anderson also noted the nature of the lawsuits has changed, with states, counties and cities accusing the industry of creating a public nuisance or deceiving the public about the dangers of burning fossil fuels.
“They’ll keep trying till they find what works,” Anderson said, adding that although the oil industry has to win every fight, climate activists need to win only a single case to secure a payout.
The Supreme Court, he said, needs to step in “and decide once and for all that states are not empowered through their courts to regulate for the entire nation.”
Exxon and other companies have asked the high court to find that federal law bars state lawsuits that seek to recoup money from the industry for greenhouse gas emissions.
If the Supreme Court takes the case — and it doesn’t have to — it will mark the justices’ second foray into the climate liability litigation. In 2021, they sided with the oil industry on a hypertechnical question in a battle over whether the climate cases belonged in federal court or the state courts where they were originally filed.
Anderson said local governments “want juries to set national policy on climate change, and our Constitution does not allow one state … to export its terrible public policy and impose that on everyone else in the country.”
Jonathan Adler, a professor at William & Mary Law School, however, said the Supreme Court has allowed such state-level disputes to proceed, unless they are expressly in conflict with federal law.
“As a policy matter, there may be unanimity on this panel that it makes very little sense to try to tackle the problem of climate change through dozens of lawsuits in dozens of jurisdictions around the country,” said Adler, who appeared alongside Anderson during the discussion at the Federalist Society convention. “But the policy arguments can’t compensate for the lack of a legal basis to preempt these suits.”
Exxon and Suncor petitioned the high court in August to overturn a Colorado Supreme Court decision that allowed a climate liability lawsuit from Boulder against the oil industry to proceed in state court.
The justices have rebuffed similar efforts twice this year. The court in January — with the urging of the then Biden administration — rejected the oil industry’s appeal of a Hawaii Supreme Court ruling that allowed Honolulu’s climate challenge to play out in state court. Two months later, the justices turned down an effort by 19 Republican state attorneys general to challenge five of their Democratic counterparts who have launched climate lawsuits.
Industry lawyers’ latest Supreme Court fight has fierce support from the Trump administration’s Department of Justice, House Republicans and GOP state attorneys general.
“Boulder and other communities are closer than ever to putting these companies on trial for their deception, and that’s why we’re seeing this latest plea for the Supreme Court to throw Big Oil a lifeline,” said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, which supports local governments in their efforts sue oil companies.
Boulder’s lawsuit is one of more than 30 filed by mostly Democratic-led governments that say the industry has contributed to the rising costs of dealing with climate change by misleading consumers about the dangers of burning fossil fuels.
None of the cases have made it to trial, and a number have collapsed this year and will not be revived. In one such case, Charleston, South Carolina, will not appeal an August ruling finding that the city did not have grounds to pursue damages under state tort law.
In Puerto Rico, the government in May voluntarily withdrew its $1 billion climate lawsuit amid pressure from allies of the oil and gas industry and just two days after the Trump administration sued two states in an effort to block climate litigation.
Yet a federal judge in September sided with the state of Maine, allowing its climate case to continue in state court. And Hawaii in May became the latest state to enter the litigation, even as Trump’s DOJ sued Hawaii and Michigan in an effort to deter the states from filing lawsuits. Hawaii’s climate lawsuit is on hold, pending resolution of the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the state.
Exxon’s Anderson said opposition against the cases has grown, noting 26 Republican attorneys general and more than 100 Republican members of Congress have weighed in at the Supreme Court on behalf of the industry in the Boulder case.
“We’re seeing a lot more courage from people and groups and industry that’s recognizing that we have a problem, and we’re not going to wait another decade for jury verdicts … that are eye-poppingly absurd to do something about it,” he said.
He said Exxon a decade ago had the support of two states in a climate case.
Boulder’s lawsuit is one of three cases that reached a state’s highest court and survived a motion to dismiss.
The Maryland Supreme Court last month heard arguments from three communities — Baltimore, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County — that are looking to revive their climate cases after lower courts found the lawsuits could not be heard in state court. It has not yet ruled.
