At Supreme Court: Can oil companies be forced to pay for climate woes?
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will open its new term Monday by hearing arguments on whether the oil and gas industry may be forced to pay damages for the scorching heat waves, wildfires and droughts that are blamed on climate change.
It’s a momentous question the justices have put off deciding for nearly a decade — and may do so again.
California joined more than two dozen blue states and municipalities in 2023 when it sued the five largest oil companies, alleging “decades of deception” over the danger of a warming climate.
They have “privately known the truth for decades but have fed us lies and mistruths to further their record-breaking profits at the expense of our environment,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said.
Fire and smoke rise at the Chevron Refinery in El Segundo in October 2025.
(Robbin Goddard/Los Angeles Times)
Such climate-change lawsuits were patterned after the mass claims against the tobacco and opioid industries. Both were accused of concealing the dangers of their very profitable products.
But the climate suits have stalled. Judges have been divided over whether these potentially huge claims should be decided in federal or state court, and if so, under what law.
Last year, Boulder County, Colo., won a 5-2 ruling in the state Supreme Court that allowed its 2018 suit to proceed as a claim of a public nuisance, an unjust enrichment or a civil conspiracy. These are referred to as “common law” claims that are long-standing and traditional but do not rely on a measure approved by the Legislature.
The Colorado judges also said the climate-change suits are not “preempted” or blocked by federal anti-pollution laws because the suit for damages did not regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
The dissenters said the state court was giving Boulder a “green light to act as its own republic” to punish the Exxon Mobil Corp. for the impact of “global climate change.”
Appealing to the Supreme Court, the oil companies sounded the same theme.
“Boulder, Colorado cannot make energy policy for the entire country,” they said. A ruling for the county would “authorize all 50 states and tens of thousands of municipalities” to ask their local juries to “impose ruinous liability” on the fossil fuel industry, they told the court.
The Trump administration joined in support of the industry’s appeal.
“Our federal system would disintegrate if each state could tackle inherently national or international problems by forcing its regulatory prescriptions on the other 49,” the administration’s lawyers wrote.
In February, the justices voted to hear the case and decide whether federal law blocks state law claims for the “effects of interstate and international greenhouse-gas emissions.”
The court scheduled the case of Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil vs. Boulder County as the first of the new term.
Legal experts say the industry’s claim to be shielded by federal law is weak.
UCLA law professor Alejandro Camacho described the “preemption arguments as the latest and perhaps most ambitious effort to weaponize federal law to prevent polluters and fraudsters from paying for the harms they cause.”
Neither the Constitution nor the Clean Air Act provides such a shield, he said.
Legal experts on the other side question the notion that a public nuisance can be defined so broadly to include both the sale of a legal product and the impact on carbon pollution, much of it coming from China and India.
The outcome in the Supreme Court remains in doubt.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, left, shown with Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh in 2025, withdrew from involvement in the climate case being argued Monday, when the court term begins.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Last week, Justice Samuel A. Alito, a reliable conservative, announced he was withdrawing from the case. He did not say why, but he owns stock in other oil companies that could be affected by the court’s decision.
A broad ruling for Boulder would send a shock through the fossil-fuel industry and clear the wave of climate-change suits to proceed in state courts.
The industry may turn to Congress. Republicans in the House and Senate have introduced bills that would shield energy companies from such liability claims.
Similarly, a broad ruling shielding the oil companies probably would block all of the climate change suits, including California’s.
The justices may opt out of ruling, however.
When they granted review of the case, they asked the lawyers on both sides to weigh in on whether the high court had “jurisdiction” to decide the Boulder case.
Usually the U.S. Supreme Court reviews only final judgments handed down by state courts, and the Boulder case did not result in a final ruling.
And without Alito, the court could split 4 to 4.
A decision based on a tie vote would affirm Boulder’s early stage victory but would not set a precedent that would govern other cases.
In its new term, the court also will hear major cases on immigration and guns.
Two of the cases test the Trump administration’s strict deportation policies. One denies bond hearings to people who entered the country illegally and may be deported.
In the past, the government usually offered bond hearings to those who could be held for months or even years while their claims were pending, so long as they could show they were not a flight risk or danger to the public.
But the Trump administration said it plans to detain tens of thousands of such persons indefinitely, even if they have no criminal record and pose no risk.
Government lawyers pointed to a provision of the 1996 immigration law that said people who entered the country illegally “shall be detained.” Previous administrations applied the mandatory-detention rule only to migrants who entered the U.S. illegally and were arrested near the border.
A refinery in Carson in 2024.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
On Thursday, the court announced it will hear arguments on the mandatory detention policy, likely to be scheduled for January.
The other case involves so-called “third-country removals.”
The administration is determined to deport immigrants who have “final orders of removal,” many of whom have criminal records. But in some cases, they may not be sent back to their country of origin.
The policy of sending them to a third country has been condemned as harsh and cruel. Thousands of these people have been flown to impoverished countries that are dangerous and where they may be subjected to abuse.
The administration says it seeks assurances from those countries that the deported persons will not be not be abused or persecuted, but it refuses hearings for individuals.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston has ruled these deportees are entitled to a “meaningful notice” of where they are being sent and “meaningful opportunity” to contest this if they have a reasonable fear they will face persecution and torture.
Trump administration lawyers filed emergency appeals at the Supreme Court to set aside Murphy’s orders. They argued that the judge had gone beyond his authority, and the court’s conservatives agreed.
In December, however, the court will hear arguments from both sides on what the law calls for in such deportation cases.
Meanwhile, on Dec. 2, the court will hear a potential landmark on gun rights and and decide whether states may prohibit possession and sale of semiautomatic AR-15 rifles.
California and 11 other blue states have adopted such laws, often in response to mass shootings.
Gun rights advocates say these rapid-fire rifles are among the most popular weapons nationwide and should be protected as lawful under the 2nd Amendment’s right “to keep and bear arms.”
After turning away cases for a decade, the justices voted to hear 2nd Amendment challenges to the laws in Cook County, Ill., and the state of Connecticut.
