The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear Wyoming and 18 other red states’ plea that the high court intervene in state-court lawsuits that seek to punish energy companies for alleged climate change harms.
Wyoming’s governor in an email Tuesday to Cowboy State Daily issued a terse condemnation of some states’ efforts to sue the energy sector.
“There have been repeated efforts by certain states to bankrupt core Wyoming industries through claims of environmental harm,” spokesman Michael Pearlman said in the email on behalf of Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon. “The Governor appreciates the (Wyoming) Attorney General and her staff for their hard work in once again standing up for Wyoming’s industries and interests.”
Lawsuit Flood
The Republican-led states in May of last year urged the U.S. Supreme Court to block a handful of states – California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and Rhode Island – from suing oil and gas companies in their own state courts.
Generally, disputes between states are handled in federal court. By allowing people to sue out-of-state energy companies in their own state courts, through their own state laws, those governments are foisting their anti-energy policies on their “sister states,” argued Wyoming and its co-plaintiffs in the 2024 filing.
“Dissatisfied with their options under federal law, however, numerous state and local governments have launched a frenzy of lawsuits invoking their own laws to demand billions of dollars in damages allegedly related to past, present, and future climate change owing, they say, to interstate gas emissions,” says the filing.
California and the other defendant states fired back that August, saying it’s their duty to protect the health and welfare of their citizens, including against “unfair and deceptive practices” that injure their states.
Filed between 2018 and 2023, the states’ lawsuits against oil and gas companies claimed they misled and deceived people about the harmful effects of their products.
A Dissent On Its Own
Without voicing its reasoning, the high court majority declined Monday to hear the red states’ case against the blue states.
But Justice Clarence Thomas penned a dissent, in which Justice Samuel Alito joined.
“The Court’s reluctance to accept jurisdiction in cases between the States is also troubling because this Court is the only court that can hear such cases,” wrote Thomas.
Thomas said the high court should revisit its “discretionary approach” to which cases it should hear and not hear. And he accused the court majority of turning states away “for policy reasons,” despite nearly half the states in the nation alleging serious constitutional violations.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
