The Justice Department and conservative groups have asked the Supreme Court to quash lawsuits seeking money and policy changes from oil companies over alleged climate harms, as the high court weighs a Colorado county’s lawsuit in the coming months.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County in its next term, which begins in October, and decide whether a lawsuit brought by the county seeking to hold oil companies accountable for their alleged role in global climate change may move forward. The case will have sweeping ramifications for similar lawsuits that climate activists and Democratic-led jurisdictions have attempted to bring against oil companies, either allowing them to proceed or shutting them down as barred by federal law.
In a brief to the Supreme Court, the DOJ urged the justices to dismiss the lawsuit, warning that it seeks to regulate matters beyond the county’s borders that only the federal government has the power to deal with.
“This case presents a basic question: Can one city wield one State’s law to dictate how the rest of the world must address a global problem with global effects? The Constitution supplies the answer: Absolutely not,” Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote for the DOJ’s brief.
The brief argued that the federal government alone can bring such an action regulating domestic emissions, further alleging Boulder officials are trying to go beyond that by attempting to regulate global emissions.
“Whereas Congress targeted only domestic emissions, Boulder would regulate the world,” the DOJ’s brief said. “Boulder’s state-law choices are no supplements to the federal scheme; they are its nemesis, thwarting [the Environmental Protection Agency’s] ability to determine whether and how to regulate stationary sources by allowing all 50 States to impose different regimes for different ends—here, attempting to impose liability so unending and extreme that fossil-fuel producers may be forced out of business.”
“This Court has never countenanced the notion that a single State could dictate how the entire country—let alone the world—addresses a global problem with indivisible global effects. The Constitution and the Clean Air Act foreclose that topsy-turvy result,” the brief continued.
Consumers’ Research, a conservative consumer watchdog, warned in a brief filed to the Supreme Court that allowing the lawsuit to go forward would “wreak havoc on consumers” and lead to a “patchwork of competing state-law commands” on issues such as climate policy. The group also warned that upholding the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling — which said federal law does not preempt the state-law claims in the case — would likely “reduce competition, raise prices, and diminish the energy options available to American consumers in every State.”
“In our federal system, one State cannot govern the whole Nation. Yet the Colorado Supreme Court’s judgment blesses Boulder County’s efforts to do precisely that here. Invoking state nuisance law, Boulder County has obtained a judicial decree that regulates conduct occurring outside of Colorado’s borders—in States where that conduct was both lawful and beyond Colorado’s sovereign authority,” the brief from the consumer watchdog said.
A group of Republican state attorneys general also filed a brief in support of the oil companies, warning that siding with Boulder would “threaten the availability of affordable energy and the sovereignty of States” and that the county’s actions are unlawful under the Constitution.
“A State cannot apply its home-state law to interstate emissions because of the ‘basic interests of federalism.’ The ‘cardinal rule, underlying all the relations of the states to each other, is that of equality of right.’ No State can ‘enforce its own policy’ on the others, so either Congress or ‘interstate common law’ must provide ‘the rule which shall control,’” said the brief from the 26 states, led by Alabama and West Virginia.
THE MAJOR SUPREME COURT DECISIONS REMAINING FOR THIS TERM
The Suncor Energy case is one of 10 that the Supreme Court has already said it will hear oral arguments in during its upcoming term. The high court has yet to schedule arguments in the case.
The Supreme Court is still wrapping up its current term over the coming weeks. Some of the most notable outstanding cases include challenges to President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order and his firing power within the executive branch, as well as a pair of cases about state laws banning biological men from women’s sports.