The U.S. Supreme Court turned down a request from 19 states led by Republicans, including Alabama, to stop five states led by Democrats from suing big oil companies for misleading the public about the role fossil fuels have played in climate change. [emphasis, links added]
The conservative state attorneys general brought a case directly to the Supreme Court that was critical of cases brought in different state courts against companies like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and BP.
The justices did not agree to hear the case. Many states, like California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, combined those lawsuits.
Almost every case the Supreme Court hears is an appeal of a lower court’s decision. But the most important court in the U.S. has “original jurisdiction” over a small number of cases where states are suing each other.
Democratic-led states sued energy companies for money damages, saying they were making the public unhappy or breaking state laws. They kept the public from knowing for decades that burning fossil fuels would cause climate change.
The companies said they did nothing wrong.
Attorneys General from Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming all joined the lawsuit in 2024.
It was led by Republican Steve Marshall of Alabama.
In their defense, they said that the Democratic-led states were breaking the law when they sued big energy companies in state courts and asked for money to cover the damages caused by climate change.
The Democratic-led states went too far when they asked for “sweeping injunctive relief or a catastrophic damages award that could restructure the national energy system,” according to the Republican-led states.
Only the federal government can control gas emissions between states.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, and the oil companies have failed several times when they tried to get state and local governments to drop or move climate change cases to federal court.
Sunoco and other oil companies tried to stop Honolulu from suing on January 13, but the Supreme Court did not hear their case. This was after the Hawaii Supreme Court let the climate change case go forward.
[Former Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration] said in 2024 that the Supreme Court shouldn’t hear either the industry’s appeal of the Honolulu case or the lawsuit by the 19 Republican-led states.
Going forward, [Republican President Donald Trump’s administration] is likely to fight these kinds of lawsuits.
Before the 2024 election, there was a promise from the Trump campaign to “stop the wave of frivolous litigation from environmental extremists.”
The states run by Democrats, led by California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta, said in a filing that the Republican case against them was “meritless” and based on a misunderstanding of their lawsuits about climate change.
They stated that the lawsuits did not aim to hold oil companies accountable for the fossil fuels they produce. They aimed to “address local harms resulting from unlawful deceptive conduct by private defendants.”
Read rest at Conservative Brief
