In courtrooms across the country, a growing number of cities and states are successfully fighting to ensure that their lawsuits seeking to hold Big Oil companies accountable for climate deception can proceed in state courts, where they were filed, instead of federal courts, where the industry hopes it will be easier to escape justice.
This week, the Center for Climate Integrity joined leading scholars of the fossil fuel industry’s deception and two nonprofit climate groups to submit an amicus (“friend-of-the-court”) brief in support of the City of Baltimore, which is asking the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to keep the city’s lawsuit seeking to make polluters pay for climate damages on track to proceed in state court. The Fourth Circuit has already rejected one argument for federal jurisdiction from Big Oil lawyers, but in May the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the appeals court judges to consider additional arguments.
The brief from CCI and partners — including the Union of Concerned Scientists, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and Drs. Naomi Oreskes, Geoffrey Supran, Robert Brulle, and Benjamin Franta, and Stephan Lewandowsky — lays out the evidence that the oil and gas industry’s climate lies aren’t just a thing of the past. Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron, and other fossil fuel entities continue to deceive the public about their products’ role in causing climate change by shifting blame to consumers, framing climate change as a “risk” instead of a reality, and by falsely promoting themselves through “greenwashing” as leaders in climate solutions. Therefore, the brief argues, these companies should be held liable in state court.