The Trump administration and two dozen Republican-led states are urging the Maryland Supreme Court to toss out three lawsuits that seek to hold the oil and gas industry financially liable for climate change.
The Department of Justice sided with the fossil fuel companies by arguing in a friend of the court brief filed Tuesday that the lawsuits “would override policy choices made by the federal government.”
The move escalates the administration’s fight with dozens of state and local governments that have asked the courts to make the fossil fuel industry compensate them for the costs of dealing with rising seas and more frequent storms.
Because the lawsuits “take aim at worldwide activities” they “implicate substantial federal interests,” wrote Adam Gustafson, acting attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.
