Washington, D.C. – The United States Supreme Court heard arguments today in BP PLC v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, the latest salvo in the oil industry’s efforts to prevent the rising tide of climate lawsuits across the country from being heard on their merits.
Relying on an arcane procedural statute, industry defendants have asked the Supreme Court to reverse a Fourth Circuit ruling that kept Baltimore’s suit in state court, where it was filed, and reject well-settled judicial precedent holding that a decision to send a case back to state court is not reviewable, except on limited, congressionally enumerated grounds. The oil companies not only seek to have a federal appellate court reconsider all their arguments why the climate accountability suits should be in federal court, but bootstrap these procedural arguments into a broader invitation to the Court to rule on whether Baltimore’s claims can be heard at all.
Nikki Reisch, Climate & Energy Program Director at the Center for International Environmental Law, issued the following statement:
“Oil companies are trying to shoehorn climate accountability cases into federal court by blowing open a narrow statutory exception to an otherwise longstanding, general rule that decisions to keep a case in state court cannot be appealed. There is strong agreement across the judicial circuits on this issue–agreement undergirded by decades of legislative practice in Congress that assumes this is how jurisdiction is handled.
In their briefs and in oral argument, the companies pressed the Court to go beyond the narrow statutory issue before them and address whether cases concerning climate change injuries should always be in federal court. With the overwhelming weight of precedent and legislative practice squarely on the side of the cities, granting the outcome that the industry defendants seek would require an extraordinary show of judicial activism. The Court can and must reject such overreach.”
Across the United States, more than two dozen cities and states have filed suit against the fossil fuel industry, alleging that the climate change arising from oil and gas companies’ conduct, including decades of denial and deception regarding the climate impacts of their products, has caused significant and growing harms, including from floodwaters, storm and fire impacts, and rising abatement costs. While most of these cases have been brought in state court, under state law, industry defendants have sought repeatedly to remove the cases to federal court in hopes of getting them dismissed there. To date, lower courts have nearly unanimously held that the city and state cases belong at the state level where they were filed and where the adverse impacts of climate change and associated costs are felt.
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Press Contact: Cate Bonacini, press@ciel.org