The U.S. Supreme Court turned down a request on Monday from 19 states led by Republicans, including Alabama, to stop five states led by Democrats from suing big oil companies for misleading the public about the role fossil fuels have played in climate change.
The conservative state attorneys general brought a case directly to the Supreme Court that was critical of cases brought in different state courts against companies like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and BP. The justices did not agree to hear the case. A lot of states, like California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, put those lawsuits together.
Almost every case the Supreme Court hears is an appeal of a lower court’s decision. But the most important court in the U.S. has “original jurisdiction” over a small number of cases where states are suing each other.
Democratic-led states sued energy companies for money damages, saying they were making the public unhappy or breaking state laws by keeping the public from knowing for decades that burning fossil fuels would cause climate change. The companies said they did nothing wrong.
Attorneys General from Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming all joined the lawsuit in 2024. It was led by Republican Steve Marshall of Alabama.
In their defense, they said that the Democratic-led states were breaking the law when they sued big energy companies in state courts and asked for money to cover the damages caused by climate change.
The Democratic-led states went too far when they asked for “sweeping injunctive relief or a catastrophic damages award that could restructure the national energy system,” according to the Republican-led states. Only the federal government can control gas emissions between states.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, and the oil companies have failed several times when they tried to get state and local governments to drop or move climate change cases to federal court.
Sunoco and other oil companies tried to stop Honolulu from suing on January 13, but the Supreme Court did not hear their case. This was after the Hawaii Supreme Court let the climate change case go forward.
The government of former Democratic President Joe Biden said in 2024 that the Supreme Court shouldn’t hear either the industry’s appeal of the Honolulu case or the lawsuit by the 19 Republican-led states.
Going forward, the administration of Republican President Donald Trump is likely to fight these kinds of lawsuits. There was a promise from the Trump campaign before the 2024 election to “stop the wave of frivolous litigation from environmental extremists.”
The states run by Democrats, led by California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta, said in a filing that the Republican case against them was “meritless” and based on a misunderstanding of their lawsuits about climate change.
According to them, the lawsuits weren’t meant to hold oil companies responsible for the fossil fuels they produce. Instead, they were meant to “address local harms resulting from unlawful deceptive conduct by private defendants.”
The nation’s highest court made headlines last week with a 7-2 ruling that the Veterans Court does not have to re-examine all evidence when reviewing disability benefits denials. It can only overturn a decision if there is a clear mistake.
This standard was questioned by two veterans, Norman Thornton and Joshua Bufkin. Thornton, who served in the Gulf War, said that his PTSD disability rating should be higher. Doctors couldn’t agree on whether Bufkin was eligible for PTSD benefits, so he wasn’t given them, MSN noted.
Their lawyers said the case could have an effect on a lot of veterans.
Along with Neil Gorsuch, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the decision makes sure that the Veterans Court will keep giving in to the VA, even though Congress is trying to protect veterans.
Veterans’ groups supported the challenge, asserting that they have consistently received leniency when claiming disabilities. This was made clearer by Congress when it created the Veterans Court in 1988 and told it to follow this standard again in 2002.
Veterans, on the other hand, said the court was too kind to the VA. The federal government said that the Veterans Court’s job is to look over decisions for clear mistakes, not to look at the evidence again.