The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from Sunoco and other major oil companies attempting to halt Honolulu’s climate lawsuit.
In the case, initially filed in 2020, fossil fuel companies are accused of misleading the public about the dangers of climate change caused by their products, leading to significant infrastructure and property damage. The justices left intact a Hawaii Supreme Court decision allowing the lawsuit to proceed under state law.
Honolulu’s suit seeks unspecified monetary damages, citing rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and extreme weather, such as heat waves stressing the electrical grid. It cites the hundreds of millions of dollars spent retrofitting a wastewater plant to address sea level rise. Aside from Sunoco, other defendants include Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and Marathon Petroleum.
The Hawaiian city’s case is part of a broader trend of state and local governments suing fossil fuel companies for their role in climate change. The companies argued the claims are preempted by federal law, asserting that interstate emissions and commerce fall under federal jurisdiction. This follows a similar rejection in April 2023, when the Supreme Court declined to move the case to federal court.
Business interests have raised red flags about Honolulu’s and other similar cases across the country, warning that such suits erode federal provisions that already govern the way these oil and gas companies operate, and threaten to raise the cost of fuel for consumers in localities across the United States.
Adam White, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner he believes that similar lawsuits will proliferate, giving the justices another chance to address the case which “distorts constitutional federalism and state tort law.”
“For years, state and local activists have tried to make themselves the nation’s energy regulators, through state tort litigation,” White said.
O.H. Skinner, executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, criticized the decision as a “massive miss by the Supreme Court.”
“These cases don’t help consumers but instead funnel money to left-wing causes,” Skinner added.
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The Biden administration had urged the justices to reject the appeal.
Now, Honolulu can move forward with its lawsuit against the companies, and is slated to transition into pre-trial discovery in the longstanding lawsuit.