They hoped to make the U.S. property-insurance industry an ally, but now, climate advocates are accusing insurers of selling out to oil and gas producers in a pivotal Supreme Court case over climate liability.
A court brief by insurance groups, which supports the fossil fuel industry’s effort to avoid liability for extreme weather damage, reveals how insurers are ignoring the need to protect their policyholders against climate change, advocates say.
The brief “on behalf of Big Oil is the clearest public confirmation yet of where their loyalties lie,” the Center for Climate Integrity, which supports lawsuits against large energy companies, said in a recent statement.
Dave Jones, a climate expert and former California insurance commissioner, said in his own recent Supreme Court brief that insurers have placed the “well-being of the fossil fuel sector” over the millions of homeowners they insure.
Insurers have a financial interest in the fossil-fuel industry because they insure and invest in oil and gas projects, Jones added. This is amplifying climate change, even as insurers use extreme weather as a justification to raise home-insurance prices on policyholders and declare large swaths of the U.S. uninsurable, he said.
A representative for an insurance group said there is no alignment with or endorsement of the fossil fuel industry.
“Our position is a legal one,” Joanna Coll, a senior vice president with the American Property Casualty Industry Association, said in an email. The association and two others filed the “friend of the court” brief in Suncor v. Boulder, a case that could force oil and gas companies to pay for costs from climate change.
Boulder County and Boulder City in Colorado are seeking damages from Suncor and Exxon Mobil for concealing climate risks that lead to increased flooding, wildfires and other property damage.
The companies say federal law bars the lawsuits, which could cost them billions of dollars in damages and are appealing a 2025 Colorado Supreme Court ruling allowing the lawsuit to proceed.
The energy producers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the global nature of climate change means only federal law should apply. The high court accepted the case in February.
The closely watched case could affect hundreds of lawsuits and potentially billions of dollars in judgments. Oral arguments are scheduled for Oct. 5.
The case will be heard amid a national debate over who should pay for rising damages from wildfires, hurricanes and other natural disasters linked to climate change. Insurers have paid increasing amounts in claims in recent years as the frequency and severity of extreme weather events has soared along with repair and reconstruction costs.
Crushed by the cost of extreme-weather events, local governments deserve to collect damages from fossil-fuel companies, whose products are the “underlying cause of the loss,” Jones, director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Law, wrote in a friend-of-the-court filing.
Jones’ brief was a direct response to a May friend-of-the-court filing by the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, the Complex Insurance Claims Litigation Association and the Reinsurance Association of America.
The groups, which represent major property and casualty insurers and reinsurers, say local governments should be barred from suing energy companies under state law. The groups also warn that letting localities sue energy companies for climate change could harm U.S. energy security.
If energy producers can be held liable under state laws, selling commercial insurance to oil and gas companies will become far more difficult because it would be impossible to estimate possible losses from litigation, they said. Insurers might simply curtail business with the sector, which would stifle investment in energy infrastructure, they claimed.
The concern is “credible,” said Daniel Schwarcz, a law professor at the University of Minnesota. Insurers might also fear that they would have to pay for climate litigation under expired policies sold to the oil and gas sector, he said.
Insurers view local-government lawsuits “as introducing a lot of unpredictability,” said Michael Pappas, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School. “It’s all very self-interested from the insurers’ perspective.”
