The U.S. Supreme Court is deciding whether to take up Honolulu's lawsuit against major oil companies.
The City and County of Honolulu filed a tort claim against Sunoco, Chevron and other oil companies in 2020, alleging that they had deceived the public about the relationship between fossil fuels and climate change. Over a dozen states and municipalities, including Maui County, are suing big players in the fossil fuel industry on similar grounds.
The defendants argue that emissions are a matter for the federal government rather than the Hawaiʻi court system, and therefore the case should be dismissed.
Richard Wallsgrove, co-director of the environmental law program at the University of Hawaiʻi Richardson School of Law, doesn't think the oil companies' argument is strong enough.
He said that Hawaiʻi courts should have jurisdiction "because these companies chose to avail themselves of the market in Hawaiʻi, and the deception was borne by the consumer."
Earlier this year, the defendants filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, and last Thursday, the justices met privately to discuss whether they would hear the case. On Monday, they asked the U.S. Solicitor General to weigh in on the issue.
If the U.S. Supreme Court does decide to hear the case, the outcome of their ruling may have serious implications for Honolulu's claim, which was cleared to go to trial by the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court last October, as well as the other lawsuits that have been filed across the country.
"This could mean the end of climate litigation," Wallsgrove said.
HPR's Savannah Harriman-Pote spoke with Wallsgrove about what could happen if the Supreme Court decides to hear the case.
———
Interview Highlights
On what oil companies knew about climate change
RICHARD WALLSGROVE: I think people should understand ... just how shocking some of the industry statements were about climate change — a recognition, for example, that climate change was likely to disrupt the agricultural production of entire nations. That sort of disruption. But we're not just talking about an economic disruption. We're talking about sort of global upheaval. When you start to mess about with agricultural systems on that scale — we're talking about the ability to feed ourselves. And the documents in this case show that the oil industry knew that [and] at the same time, they were manufacturing a debate about whether or not climate change is real. That should disturb all of us.
On the defendants' argument
WALLSGROVE: The oil companies say they're not accountable for deceptive marketing, that no matter how much they lied about the dangers of climate change, no matter how much that they marketed fossil fuels and pushed for government policies, at the same time they were hiding these dangers of climate change, the defendant's response is that there's just no law that holds them accountable for the injury, the real damage that's caused by climate change — things like sea level rise, which we know has a price tag of billions of dollars here in Hawaiʻi. The only entity that would be left on the hook would be private citizens to pay for their own injuries, or to leave places like Honolulu or Maui sort of in a lurch and on their own to pay for these climate injuries.
On whether the U.S. Supreme Court will take the case
WALLSGROVE: It can be a fool's errand sometimes to divine exactly what the justices are thinking on a particular case. But it's clear that asking for the Solicitor General's opinion on this means that they are considering taking up the case. Right? They wouldn't bother to take that step with the Solicitor General if they'd already decided not to take the case up.
On what happens if the Supreme Court takes the case and rules favorably for the defendants
WALLSGROVE: The fear that I think that a number of folks have is that with a US Supreme Court that is increasingly viewed as activist and taking up issues based on political preferences, they could go even further and write a US Supreme Court opinion could say that all climate issues, all issues that related no matter how tenuously to emissions that can cross over state boundaries, are not state tort law issues, which means you have to go back to federal courts for any sort of climate litigation, and we already know that the there are severe limits on what you could do with federal law because the Clean Air Act has been ruled to preempt other attempts to regulate interstate emissions.
On how the petition before the Supreme Court may affect the timeline of the case going to trial
WALLSGROVE: The reality of litigation like this, really complex litigation involving multiple defendants, multiple legal theories, state law and arguably federal law issues, is it's just a slow, slow process, no matter what, even if the US Supreme Court doesn't take up the case. ... So this one procedural step probably doesn't change the overall timeline much.
