Biden Administration Asks Supreme Court to Reject Oil Companies’ Climate Change Case

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is urging the Supreme Court to allow local governments to continue suing oil companies they accuse of deceiving the public about their fuels contributing to climate change.

The oil companies and Republican state attorneys general are trying to block the lawsuits.

The leading case is a petition to the Supreme Court by oil companies that lost a lawsuit to the city of Honolulu, Hawaii. Hawaiian officials accused the companies of violating state laws against nuisance, failure to warn consumers and trespass.

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar filed a brief this week asking the Supreme Court to side with Hawaii.

She wrote that the “state law claims rested on the same theory of liability: that petitioners have known for decades that greenhouse gas emissions from the use of their fossil fuel products would contribute to climate change; that instead of warning consumers about those consequences, [the oil companies] engaged in deceptive marketing by concealing and mis-presenting the dangers of using their fossil fuel products.”

In recent years, Hawaii has endured rising sea levels encroaching on coastal communities, higher annual temperatures and shoreline erosion, all of it blamed on climate change.

The city of Honolulu’s lawsuit was filed in 2020 against Sunoco, Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron and Shell.

The Hawaii Supreme Court rejected the oil companies’ request to dismiss the lawsuit. The oil companies petitioned the Supreme Court last February.

In related cases, 19 Republican-led states are trying to prevent Democratic-led states from pursuing similar lawsuits against oil companies. The Democratic state lawsuits were filed by California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

The Republican attorneys general argue that the plaintiffs are indirectly trying to regulate the oil industry, which is an authority reserved to the federal government.

Their petition to the Supreme Court says “every state has a stake in the nation’s resources and the natural world. And any state’s actions to alter the composition of shared resources necessarily affects the other states. The only neutral authority that can fairly govern such matters is federal law.”

An attorney for Chevron said in a statement that Supreme Court review was appropriate “to prevent pointless harm to our nation’s energy security.”

Prelogar argued in her brief the cases should stay in state courts rather than being subjected to Supreme Court intervention. The lawsuits are based on state law claims, not federal law, she said.

Prelogar added her brief to the case at the request of the Supreme Court.

The dispute continues as President-elect Donald Trump signals a sharp change in energy policy likely to favor oil companies after he takes office on Jan. 20.

He said during his presidential campaign that he would stop the “frivolous litigation” against oil companies.

President Joe Biden has favored moving the United States away from fossil fuels while Trump prefers an all-of-the-above policy that would include more oil drilling and dependence on gasoline.

Chris Wright, a fracking magnate and Trump’s nominee for Energy secretary, acknowledges that burning oil and natural gas contributes to global warming but also says climate change is only a moderate threat to humanity.

He says fossil fuels are essential to modern life “and we simply don’t have meaningful substitutes for oil, gas and coal today.”

The relevant cases before the U.S. Supreme Court are Sunoco v. City and County of Honolulu and Alabama v. California.

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