The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will hear a significant climate lawsuit in which oil companies are seeking to avoid being tried in state court.
The fate of several dozen climate lawsuits brought against oil companies by state and local governments could hinge on the decision, which could determine whether the cases should be tried in state or federal court. The suits seek to force oil companies to pay billions of dollars to help governments grapple with the costs of climate-related damages, such as natural disasters, rising sea levels and drought.
Exxon Mobil Corp. and Suncor Energy Inc., which have been sued by the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, are attempting to move the suit to federal court. That would allow them to argue that they followed national regulations when extracting and selling their products. Oil companies have claimed that federal rules around greenhouse gas emissions should preempt efforts to sue them under state laws — and they think they have a better chance of winning in federal court.
But the roughly three dozen state and local governments that have sued oil companies in recent years argue that the cases belong in state court. Many of the lawsuits cite state consumer protection and fraud laws, along with evidence that the companies knew about the risks of climate change while downplaying it in public.
The states of California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont, as well as many more cities, counties and tribes, have all filed lawsuits against oil companies over climate change.
Previous efforts to move such lawsuits to federal court have been denied by federal judges, with the Supreme Court declining to hear challenges to those rulings.
If the Supreme Court were to move the Boulder case to federal court, it would be a major win for oil companies, who have long claimed that national regulations such as the Clean Air Act should supersede state laws. Such a ruling could open the door for many of the other cases to be removed from state courts, where the state and local governments feel they have stronger leverage.
The case could also be complicated by the Trump administration’s recent repeal of the endangerment finding, the scientific determination that underpinned the federal government’s regulations of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. With the feds stepping back from climate regulation, some observers believe the oil companies will have a harder time claiming that state lawsuits fall under the scope of federal policy.
In a written statement to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency prior to the repeal of the endangerment finding, a group of investor-owned electric utilities raised that concern. The Edison Electric Institute, in its letter to the agency, said that federal greenhouse gas emissions helped “protect the power sector” from legal claims by “displacing” lawsuits over companies’ role in contributing to climate change.
“Should EPA remove its regulation of [greenhouse gases], it increases the likelihood that environmental non-governmental organizations, advocacy groups, citizen groups, and other parties will seek to bring new tort suits and other litigation to test the bounds of continued [Clean Air Act] displacement of federal common law,” the group wrote.
Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at [email protected].
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes New Jersey Monitor, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
