The Supreme Court has green-lighted the fossil fuel industry’s latest attempt to quash a swath of lawsuits seeking to hold oil companies accountable for the costs of climate change.
In an order issued Monday, the justices agreed to consider an argument from Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy that federal law bars local governments from seeking relief for climate change in state courts. The high court’s move is a preliminary win for the companies, which have warned that such lawsuits could cost them billions of dollars.
It takes the vote of four justices to agree to hear a petition — a threshold most requests fail to achieve. The court rebuffed similar efforts twice last year but did hand energy companies a narrow procedural win in the litigation in 2021. The court added a question to the companies’ request, asking both parties to determine whether the Supreme Court has the authority to hear the case.
The oil and gas companies called their latest petition, Suncor v. Boulder, “extraordinarily compelling” and argued there is a “clear and acknowledged conflict” as to whether federal law precludes local governments from filing lawsuits against fossil fuel producers for the alleged effects of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The city and county of Boulder, located outside Denver in the Rocky Mountain foothills, sued the oil companies in 2018. The lawsuit — like several dozen others like it across the U.S. — accused the companies of deceiving the public about the dangers of burning fossil fuels and seeks compensation for the costs of rising temperatures and intensifying storms.
In May, the Colorado Supreme Court allowed the lawsuit to proceed in state court. The oil companies in August asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the decision, saying it could lead to a patchwork of case law in state courts.
“The damages in even one case could potentially reach into the billions of dollars; and there are thousands of other local governments that could bring their own actions,” the companies said in one brief urging the Supreme Court to take up their petition in the Boulder case.
The oil industry has the backing of the Trump administration, which told the justices in September that it recently went to court to block similar efforts by states to impose state-law liability on the companies.
“Allowing Colorado to deem the effects of the companies’ worldwide conduct tortious cannot be reconciled with the decision making scheme Congress enacted in the Clean Air Act, which precludes any such role for a single state,” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote at the time.
Lawyers for Boulder contend that states “have always had the authority to provide remedies for in-state injuries arising from out-of-state conduct.” They called such litigation “commonplace,” pointing to similar lawsuits against the manufacturers of opioids and asbestos, as well as Hustler magazine.
“There is no constitutional bar to states addressing in-state harms caused by out-of-state conduct, be it the negligent design of an automobile or sale of asbestos,” Boulder’s brief said.
