The U.S. Supreme Court Should Shut Down Energy Lawfare Chaos

One of the myriad lawfare strategies that have targeted US and European oil and gas producers in recent years is now receiving elevated attention from the media and courts. The strategy involves plaintiffs’ firms persuading individual states, counties, and cities to sue these companies alleging ill-defined climate impacts as a result of their greenhouse gas emissions. 

In one of the most high-profile cases, the Hawaii state supreme court in October ruled that the city and county of Honolulu could pursue such a claim under state tort law in the case Sunoco v. City of Honolulu. The court held that the city could pursue the claims regardless of the obvious fact that some or most of the emissions that may have caused the alleged impacts originated from all parts of the world. 

The defendants in the case filed a writ of Certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the city must respond by May 1. The petition by the defendants is entirely logical in its contention that it defies both logic and the U.S. Constitution that individual states should be permitted to use state laws to sue for alleged damages that fall under federal law. 

The reason is obvious: Allowing any state to pursue such claims would open the door to companies having to do business in compliance with 50 separate sets of environmental requirements that should fall under the provisions of federal statutes like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Opening the question up to enabling individual cities or counties to pursue similar claims under state laws would create such a high level of complexity and chaos that it could become essentially impossible to do business in the United States. The result could likely be the flight of billions of dollars in capital investment to other countries around the world.