The Supreme Court on Monday rejected two separate bids to scrap the City of Honolulu’s climate-related lawsuit, which accuses major oil and gas companies of knowingly promoting false and misleading information about the dangers of climate change caused by burning large quantities of fossil fuels.
The suit can now proceed despite efforts from Sunoco, Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, and Chevron. The companies tried to block Honolulu’s lawsuit, arguing it could proceed only under federal law —not in state court — because the legal claims sought to regulate gas emissions or interstate commerce.
Hawaii’s supreme court rejected this argument in November 2023, allowing the case to move forward because it seeks to punish deceptive marketing practices and not restrict interstate commerce.
After the Hawaii supreme court’s ruling, the five fossil-fuel corporations asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision. Their pleas were denied.
In a brief order, the Court withheld an explanation for not hearing the Sunoco v. Honolulu or Shell v. Honolulu bids. Notably, Justice Samuel Alito recused himself from considering or deciding on these petitions, presumably because the conservative jurist owns oil stocks.
Now that the Court has not taken the case, blue states and municipalities will continue bending the law in an effort to punish oil companies for their alleged schemes to conceal the dangers of climate change.
Honolulu’s climate change lawsuit is one of roughly two dozen filed by blue states and cities in recent years.
In 2023, the Supreme Court rejected similar appeals from major oil companies facing a wave of public nuisance lawsuits filed by cities in Colorado, Maryland, and Rhode Island over the emissions of greenhouse gases.
In 2021, however, the Court sided with oil companies in a similar lawsuit from Baltimore. That case was sent back to the lower courts on procedural grounds before it was ultimately dismissed by a Maryland court last year.
California, meanwhile, sued five Big Oil producers — ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and BP — and the American Petroleum Institute in 2023 for allegedly deceiving the public for decades about the impact of climate change that created climate-related harms in the state.
That lawsuit is being challenged by 19 Republican states that hope to to block litigation over climate change.
The GOP coalition argues five Democratic-controlled states — California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island — have no authority to regulate interstate gas emissions beyond their borders and that they’re trying to dictate U.S. energy policy.
Monday’s order comes one month after the Biden-era Justice Department’s solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, filed two briefs imploring the Supreme Court to reject the oil industry’s bids over the Honolulu lawsuit and the petition from the Republican attorneys general over the blue state lawsuits.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority requested input from the solicitor general on the two cases in June and October 2024, respectively.
Prelogar’s briefs were significant because the DOJ effectively abandoned its long-standing rule that upholds federal authority over state authority. Here, the solicitor general argued states can continue suing major oil and gas companies on interstate emissions. While states can regulate emissions that cross state lines to a certain extent, that responsibility falls under the Environmental Protection Agency.
The DOJ has historically “not been very fond of saying states get to do something across state boundaries,” O.H. Skinner, executive director of Alliance for Consumers, previously told National Review. “They’re not very fond of saying nationwide issues can be tackled by local governments because they’re normally very protective of federal agency power. Federal agencies solve national problems, states and local governments get to solve local problems.”
Skinner was disappointed in the Supreme Court’s order dismissing the oil industry’s cases, as he believes the outcome will benefit radical environmentalists, left-wing trial lawyers, and dark money groups.
“This is a massive miss by the Supreme Court, as Joe Biden has been allowed to slip through one more dark-money giveaway as he leaves office. Consumers are not helped by these cases, which seek to wipe products from store shelves and funnel money to left-wing causes,” Skinner said in a statement obtained by NR.
“Here is hoping the targets of these lawsuits continue to fight these cases, as they have consistently prevailed in the final stages of review and that is the only way for consumers to not be sacrificed before the left-wing onslaught here.”
The Supreme Court’s action — or lack thereof — comes a week before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Skinner previously noted if the Court took the case, Trump’s DOJ would likely file the briefs in favor of the oil companies seeking to stop Honolulu from suing them.
One law professor says the Supreme Court’s order has problematic implications for how radical environmentalists can affect national energy policy.
“For years, state and local activists have tried to make themselves the nation’s energy regulators, through state tort litigation. It distorts constitutional federalism and state tort law alike,” said Adam White, executive director of the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
“While the Court denied cert in this particular case, cases like this will only continue to proliferate as more and more state officials try to make themselves national energy policy czars. I hope that the Court will hear the issue someday, for the sake of constitutional accountability and the public interest.”