Dive Brief:
- The Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit brought by 19 Republican-led states against California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and Rhode Island over their litigation seeking to hold Big Oil financially accountable for climate change.
- The judges ruled 7-2 Monday against taking up the case, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting.
- The Republican states, led by Alabama, filed a petition with the court in May, according to court documents. It is the second time this year the Supreme Court has declined to intervene in a case involving jurisdictions leading climate lawsuits against oil companies.
Dive Insight:
The Republican states alleged in their initial filing to the court that the five defendant states are looking to “assert the power to dictate the future of the American energy industry … by imposing ruinous liability and coercive remedies on energy companies” in state climate litigations.
The filing cites climate lawsuits brought against oil majors by each of the states in their respective state courts. Alabama was joined in the petition by Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
As the case concerned a dispute between states, the plaintiffs had asked the Supreme Court to express its jurisdiction over the case and hear the lawsuit, according to the May 2024 filing.
California and the other defendants argued in an August brief that Alabama and the other states had not satisfied the standards to require the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction, and that the case was a matter among private parties in each state, rather than the petitioners’ framing of the lawsuit as an issue of states’ sovereign rights.
“What the [states’ climate litigations] actually allege is that the defendant companies knew their products contributed to climate change and associated harms; withheld that information and misled customers about that relationship; and, as a result, accelerated and exacerbated the local harms of climate change in the Defendant States,” the reply brief said.
Elizabeth Prelogar, the former U.S. Solicitor General, concurred with the defendants’ views both on the lack of jurisdictional standing and that the lawsuit — which she called “a suit to enjoin other suits” — concerns only the rights of private energy companies in the government’s official standpoint, issued Dec. 10.
“The plaintiff States’ complaint does not satisfy this Court’s usual criteria for hearing an original action—both because the defendant States’ claims directly affect only the private energy companies’ interests, and because the pending state court suits are adequate (indeed, better) forums for addressing the validity of the claims against those companies,” the Biden administration’s solicitor general wrote.
Thomas’ dissent argued that the nation’s highest court should not utilize discretion in taking up cases between states, but is constitutionally and congressionally required to do so. Thomas said the court’s decision not to hear this case was “troubling,” as it is the only one with jurisdiction to hear arguments between states, and is rejecting a suit alleging constitutional violations “involving nearly half the states in the nation.”
“The Court today leaves the 19 plaintiff States without any legal means of vindicating their claims against the 5 defendant States,” Thomas wrote in the Alito-joined dissent.
The decision comes a few months after the Supreme Court declined to intervene and stop the city and county of Honolulu’s lawsuit seeking to hold Sunoco, Shell and other oil majors accountable for their role in climate change. The oil companies petitioned the nation’s highest court to intervene after the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that the case can continue. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal in January.
The annual number of climate lawsuits has nearly tripled since 2015, and states have had mixed success in courts so far. While Honolulu’s case was allowed to continue, and oil companies have failed to dismiss California’s climate litigation thus far, a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed New York City’s lawsuit against oil majors in January.
