Supreme Court Asked To Halt Boulder’s Taxpayer Funded Climate Lawfare

By Kyle Kohli | Complete Colorado

In a brief filed Thursday with the U.S. Supreme Court, defendants argued the high court should end Boulder’s climate lawsuit once and for all to avoid a “chaos” of a patchwork of state court rulings governing energy policy.

In February, after eight years of Boulder pursuing its taxpayer-funded climate lawsuit against Exxon and Suncor, SCOTUS agreed to review the energy companies’ petition on whether state and local governments can use tort law to regulate global greenhouse gas emissions. The Court will hear oral arguments in the case during its fall term this year.

SCOTUS has the opportunity to deliver a major blow to the national climate litigation campaign and its attempt push public policy through the courts.

Policymaking via lawfare

In their brief, the defendants make a clear and simple argument that state judges across the country have overwhelmingly agreed with:

“The question presented in this case is whether state law is competent within our federal system to impose potentially crushing monetary liability on a subset of energy producers for localized harms allegedly caused by the effects of interstate and international greenhouse-gas emissions on the global climate. The answer to that question is no.”

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