Boulder Climate Case Risks Imposing Local Agendas on the Entire Nation

By Christopher Mills | Commentary, The Federalist

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court should consider a basic constitutional reality: county officials from Boulder, Colorado, cannot force their preferred climate policies on the rest of the nation. Obvious as it seems, that is what’s at stake in Suncor Energy Inc. v. Boulder County, a climate change case the court will weigh for review on Dec. 12.

Like the other thirty-odd copycat climate lawsuits filed by states and localities from Honolulu to my hometown of Charleston, Boulder’s suit weaponizes tort law to try to transform state courts into vehicles for deploying sweeping climate mandates. If Boulder gets its way, the casualties won’t be confined to the energy companies it endeavors to bankrupt; American consumers and the U.S. economy writ large will be caught in the crossfire.

Boulder’s lawsuit follows the now-familiar script crafted by climate trial lawyers: sue a handful of oil and gas companies for the worldwide effects of greenhouse-gas emissions generated over decades by billions of people and entities, then demand billions of dollars to “abate” alleged local climate-related costs. The plaintiffs inventively spin a narrative of the companies’ alleged contributions to global climate change and how those contributions purportedly create a “public nuisance” in their local jurisdictions. 

But nothing about the suit is local — not the causes it identifies, not the harms it alleges, not the remedies it seeks, and not the implications of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision allowing it to advance. Like the interstate carbon emissions central to its complaint, Boulder’s case is inherently national in scope. And the consequence of a judgment in its favor will be felt far beyond the borders of Boulder, Colorado.

The Founders warned of the peril in allowing one state to impose its policies on another and thus created constitutional safeguards to prevent such encroachments on state sovereignty. In Federalist No. 80, Alexander Hamilton explained that issues of concern to the nation belong in federal court, not parceled out to local tribunals with potentially competing interests. And the Founders entrusted Congress with the authority to make policy decisions of national consequence. Courtrooms, particularly state courts, are simply not equipped to address a complex, global phenomenon like climate change. 

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