Supreme Court spotlights fight against climate action in term opener

WASHINGTON (CN) — The opening salvo of the Supreme Court’s 2026 term kicks off next week with Big Oil’s fight to squash lawsuits that would leave fossil fuel companies to foot the bill for damage caused by climate change.On Monday, the justices will hear oral arguments in Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, the first of so-called climate accountability lawsuits to be argued before the Supreme Court.More than one in four Americans live in a community that has a similar active lawsuit, according to research from the Center for Climate Integrity. In the absence of climate action by the federal government, local communities are stepping up to fill the void.David versus GoliathFrom residential city blocks to mountain communities and a shrinking glacier, the impacts of climate change have become intimately familiar in Boulder, Colorado. Rising temperatures in the West have led to heat waves, droughts, wildfires and floods, all exacting a cost on the residents and the land they live on.Local officials have spent millions on property damage payouts, and they expect to spend much more on infrastructure updates and hazard mitigation projects to offset the impacts of climate change.In 2018, Boulder sued Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobile, demanding the oil companies pitch in for the damage they caused. Local officials accuse the oil giants of intentionally misleading the public about the effects of climate change and the role that fossil fuel products played in exacerbating those impacts.Boulder’s lawsuit and dozens others like it test the authority of local governments to address the national problem of global warming.“The city and town of Boulder are alleging that the oil industry is responsible under state tort law for these kinds of harms that are accruing to the citizens of Colorado inside state boundaries, even though the harmful activity — the marketing and production of fossil fuel — happened around the country,” said Chris Winter, executive director of the University of Colorado Law School’s Getches-Wilkinson Center.War on three frontsOil companies have fought hard to kneecap Boulder’s lawsuit before it goes to trial. For the last eight years, Suncor and Exxon have tried unsuccessfully to dodge the suit.Now at the Supreme Court, the oil companies are fighting Boulder’s lawsuit with federal law, arguing the state law claims are preempted under the Clean Air Act and the Constitution. The Clean Air Act gave the Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate air emissions and protect public health. And under the Constitution, the oil companies say, such interstate matters must be addressed on the federal level to ensure uniformity.But the oil industry also has a long history of opposing EPA regulations. President Donald Trump installed many lawyers and lobbyists for the oil and chemical industry into the agency, which has since rolled back environmental protections and emissions rules.Earlier this year, the administration finalized its decision to rescind the 2009 “endangerment finding,” which declared carbon emissions a threat to public health and underpinned Clean Air Act rules, such as the Clean Car and Truck Standards.“The Trump administration is trying to rescind or roll back the federal government’s authority under the Clean Air Act, and has fundamentally reversed the federal government’s interpretation of the provisions of the Clean Air Act that supported the government’s regulation of greenhouse gasses previously,” Winter said.Michael Gerrard, an environmental lawyer and law professor at Columbia Law School who founded the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said the Trump administration’s actions are a part of a longer trend of Democrat and Republican administrations flip-flopping on the issue.“Every time the party control of the White House changes, the federal government does a 180 on climate policy, which is not the way to build up the momentum we really need in order to address the terrible impacts of climate change,” Gerrard said.Winter said air pollution regulation has been mostly left up to whoever holds the White House because of inaction in Congress, which he says has been heavily influenced by lobbying from the fossil fuel industry.“The fossil fuel industry has been very successful in lobbying Congress heavily and preventing the legislative branch from implementing climate change legislation,” Winter said. “And because of that, I think the courts have struggled with how far the federal government and especially EPA can go to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under other legal authorities that perhaps don’t speak quite as directly to climate change as we would like.”The Roberts court has been extremely skeptical of the federal government’s authority in this area. In 2022, the conservative supermajority shot down coal power plant regulations under the Clean Air Act known as the Clean Power Plan. West Virginia v. EPA also cemented the major questions doctrine, a legal principle limiting federal authority without explicit authorization by Congress.Advocates for fossil fuel regulations worry that the Supreme Court’s review of Suncor and Exxon’s case is an effort to shut down another avenue for climate justice.“If you shut down climate legislation and you shut down climate regulation, what’s left is climate litigation,” Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said. “The people harmed by all this damage from all this pollution usually have a right to bring a lawsuit, and sure enough, lawsuits are emerging. So the next project of the court is to attack climate litigation, and sure enough, the fossil fuel industry is all over that.”Tiebreaker The closely watched case received a shock earlier this week when Justice Samuel Alito announced he would no longer participate in the appeal. While the George W. Bush appointee didn’t explain his reasoning, Alito has previously recused in environmental cases because of his financial interests in oil companies.Now before only eight justices, there is a possibility that a tie vote will render the high court unable to issue a ruling. Gerrard said the questions presented differ from other environmental cases, which typically divide the court along ideological lines.“Several of the conservative members of the Supreme Court are very reluctant to find preemption where there is not an explicit statutory provision for preemption,” Gerrard said. “And so here the Clean Air Act not only lacks preemption clause, it has the opposite. It has a savings clause. So it’s possible that some of the conservative justices will say no, this isn’t an appropriate case for preemption because there’s no statutory basis for preempting these kinds of state law claims.”Last year, the court was similarly down a justice when it considered environmental review standards for a Utah oil railway. Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, also issued a last-minute recusal from the appeal, presumably over his ties to an oil billionaire who stood to profit from the ruling.While the Supreme Court came to a unanimous ruling in the case, the justices split ideologically over their reasoning. The decision left open questions about future interpretations of the National Environmental Policy Act known as NEPA.The court could soon address such inquiries, however, just days after arguments in Suncor. On Oct. 7, the all nine justices will hear arguments in Department of Air Force v. Prutehi Guahan to decide if the government must comply with NEPA requirements setting off waste munitions on Guam’s beaches.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads