The Supreme Court’s ruling in Monday’s case could affect much more than lawsuits dealing with climate change.
The stakes in the case itself are high enough. Dozens of lawsuits from states and localities seek billions of dollars from energy companies they accuse of having caused harm by producing and marketing fossil fuels.
The case before the justices concerns just two localities — Boulder, Colo., and the surrounding county of the same name. But if the court rules that federal law bars their legal theories, which are based on state law, all of those lawsuits are likely to be dismissed.
Such a ruling, lawyers for Boulder told the justices, would also cast a shadow over many other areas of the law in which all kinds of entities and companies have been accused under state laws of bearing responsibility for harms they caused. It could make it harder to sue, they wrote, for “defective products sold nationwide, multistate antitrust conspiracies, international frauds or internet-based defamation.”
Boulder accused the energy companies of, among other things, deceptive marketing. That same theory has figured in thousands of lawsuits against the tobacco industry, pharmaceutical companies and asbestos manufacturers.
Some of the supporting briefs in the case came from groups whose missions do not obviously intersect with climate change. But they expressed concern over the potential sweep of the court’s decision.
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, for instance, filed a brief supporting Boulder. It urged the justices not to undermine “the important role that state and local government suits have played in addressing the predictable harms of guns and gun violence.”
Lawyers for the defendants, Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil, focused their arguments on lawsuits like the one from Boulder.
“The requested damages in any one case could reach into the billions,” one brief said. “And if claims such as Boulder’s are allowed to proceed, every political jurisdiction in the nation could bring a similar suit.”
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