After ending last week with a rebuke of President Donald Trump’s sweeping claim of the power to impose tariffs, the Supreme Court started this week by taking up an appeal, backed by his administration, from oil companies fighting climate change lawsuits.
The federal government isn’t a party to the appeal that the court agreed on Monday to review, called Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, Colorado. But it still urged the justices to take up the matter, citing a federal interest.
It argued that the Colorado Supreme Court was “manifestly wrong on a question of vast nationwide significance” when it let a state lawsuit proceed. In its amicus brief backing review of the petition brought by Suncor and Exxon Mobil, the administration warned that the state court’s reasoning would mean that “every locality in the country could sue essentially anyone in the world for contributing to global climate change.”
Calling the legal issue in the case “one of the most important questions currently pending in the lower courts,” the petition said that companies are facing suits across the country seeking billions of dollars in damages for alleged harms from climate change. The companies argue that federal law should block the state-law claims because the high court has recognized that states can’t provide relief for injuries allegedly caused by pollution from outside the state.
Ruling against the companies last year, the Colorado Supreme Court said that Boulder’s claims aren’t blocked by federal law, though the court emphasized that it wasn’t weighing in on the merits of Boulder’s claims, rather only on whether the suit could proceed.
Boulder has alleged claims of public and private nuisance, trespass, unjust enrichment and civil conspiracy, seeking damages for the role that the corporate defendants’ production, promotion, refining, marketing and sale of fossil fuels has allegedly played in climate change and, more specifically, in causing harm to the locality’s property and residents.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and similar groups also supported the companies’ bid for review.
Unsuccessfully opposing review, Boulder questioned whether the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to review the appeal, while maintaining that federal law doesn’t preempt state claims in any event. The opposition brief said that states “have always had the authority to provide remedies for in-state injuries arising from out-of-state conduct.”
When the Supreme Court granted review on Monday, on top of agreeing to consider the question presented by the petition — “Whether federal law precludes state-law claims seeking relief for injuries allegedly caused by the effects of interstate and international greenhouse-gas emissions on the global climate” — the justices instructed the parties to address whether the court has the jurisdiction that Boulder questioned. That instruction could provide an avenue for the state claims to proceed if the high court agrees with Boulder on jurisdiction.
But we may not find out until next year how this appeal will play out, because the case will likely be argued in the term that starts in October.
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