The US Constitution and laws do not protect oil companies from being sued over the harm they cause to the climate

In recent years, at least two dozen local and state governments have sued petroleum companies to recover the billions in costs they have incurred responding to and rebuilding after flooding, storms and wildfires – all of which have been worsened by changes to the climate resulting from burning fossil fuels. Most of these lawsuits, often filed in state courts, make a simple claim: Fossil fuel companies knew for decades that their products were harmful but concealed that fact to protect their profits. The lawsuits ask judges to order companies that have profited from the extraction and sale of fossil fuels to pay for the costs their products have imposed on the taxpaying public. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear one of these cases, Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, in the term beginning in October 2026. In their appeal to the Supreme Court, the oil companies are asking the nation’s highest court to block state courts from even considering holding the companies liable for climate-related damages. The effort to block liability is part of a decades-long strategy by the conservative legal movement to limit victims’ ability to seek reimbursement for damage caused by corporate irresponsibility. In fact, this type…

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