Supreme Court clears a path for climate lawsuits to proceed

In a decision widely seen as benefiting climate activists, the Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a challenge to a lawsuit filed by Honolulu against oil companies over their role in global warming.

The Honolulu case is one of the most prominent among two dozen similar suits brought by state and local governments that argue oil companies engaged in a decades-long cover-up about climate change in a quest for profit, and should have to pay for the consequences.

Other major cases include a lawsuit by the state of California — which is currently battling historic wildfires — as well as suits by several California cities and counties.

If the Supreme Court had chosen to review Honolulu’s lawsuit, experts said, the energy companies likely would have moved to pause the other cases immediately. And an eventual decision by the conservative high court could have later doomed the cases. Now, however, the lawsuits will be able to proceed in state courts.

“The theory that the oil companies were using in this case, if it succeeded, would have shut down all those other cases,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

Theodore Boutrous Jr. of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, who represents Chevron, one of the targets of the Honolulu lawsuit, said the company would “continue to defend against meritless state law climate litigation, which clashes with basic constitutional principles, undermines sound energy policy and is factually meritless.”

The lawsuits, which seek potentially billions of dollars in damages, have been growing in number since 2017.

As the price tag of damage connected to climate change continues to rise, cities and states are trying to figure out how to pay for it.

Legal action has seemed like a promising avenue.

“California taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for billions of dollars in damages — wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said when he announced his state’s suit in 2023.

Energy companies and their allies have countered that the lawsuits are a “blueprint for chaos” that threaten the country’s energy security. The oil companies say cases like these, which have been filed in state courts, should be thrown out entirely, arguing that federal law, not state law, governs the issues in question. They accuse local officials of trying to hijack policymaking and regulate global emissions by court order.

The companies that filed the Supreme Court petition included Sunoco, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and others. Shell filed its own petition, asking the court to weigh in on similar questions. Both were denied Monday in an order issued by the justices who, by custom, typically don’t explain why they have declined to hear a case.

The order noted that Justice Samuel Alito did not take part in considering the matter, without offering explanation. According to his latest financial disclosure form, Alito holds stock in some of the companies named in the Honolulu suit.

Honolulu’s case began in 2020, when the city and county filed suit in state court against the companies, alleging that their actions had caused “a substantial portion” of the effects of climate change on the city, including more frequent and more disastrous storms and droughts.

Efforts to move the Honolulu case to federal court — seen as a more favorable venue for energy companies — failed, and the Hawaii Supreme Court agreed that the case could proceed to trial. The energy companies had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Hawaii Supreme Court’s decision.

Of the cases pending in state courts, ones brought by Massachusetts and Rhode Island are likely closest to trial.

Ben Sullivan, executive director of Honolulu’s Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency, applauded Monday’s Supreme Court order.

“This landmark decision upholds our right to enforce Hawaii laws in Hawaii courts, ensuring the protection of Hawaii taxpayers and communities from the immense costs and consequences of the climate crisis caused by the defendants’ misconduct,” he said.

Monday’s order doesn’t mean the justices won’t take up the questions raised by the cases in the future. If they were to do so, environmentalists do not expect a favorable ruling from a conservative supermajority court.

In June, the court had asked the Biden administration’s solicitor-general, Elizabeth Prelogar, for her view on the Honolulu case, a sign they were considering hearing it. In a December brief, she wrote that the Supreme Court should hold off as the case plays out in the lower courts.

But a Trump-appointed solicitor general could take a different tack.

The energy industry is pushing hard for a way to quash all of the cases at once. Another looming Supreme Court challenge to the climate-deception cases was brought by Alabama and 18 other states, asking the Supreme Court to block lawsuits by California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall argued that the cases would impose “ruinous liability and coercive remedies on energy companies.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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