Supreme Court case could limit future lawsuits against fossil-fuel industry

The Supreme Court heard a case on climate change Tuesday that could help shape the fate of dozens of similar lawsuits across the country.

The hearing in BP v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore was not about whether climate change is real or caused by greenhouse gases generated by humans. The hearing was not even about whether fossil-fuel companies should pay Baltimore for the costs of climate change, which is the point of the underlying lawsuit.

Instead, the justices decided to hear the case on a single, highly technical legal question: What happens when a federal court sends a case to be heard in state courts? That is what has occurred in the Baltimore case, which began its life in state court, and which the fossil-fuel companies are trying to move to federal court, where they expect a more favorable outcome. The question before the Supreme Court is whether, in hearing the appeal of a decision to send a case back to state court, a federal appeals court must limit its review to the two very specific and narrow reasons that the law allows or whether it can look more broadly at the lower court’s decision.

What concerns some environmental-law experts is that by allowing a broader review of the lower court’s decision, the justices might scuttle similar cases or send a strong signal that the lower courts should do so.

To the industry, climate cases should be the bailiwick of Congress and regulatory agencies.

Baltimore’s acting city solicitor, Dana P. Moore, said the city filed its lawsuit in the state courts “because that is the appropriate forum for seeking accountability for localized harms.” She called the fossil-fuel industry’s efforts to move the case to federal court “a delay tactic.”

A number of science and advocacy organizations, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, have called for the Supreme Court’s newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett, to recuse herself from the case because her father, Michael Coney, was for many years a leading lawyer and official for Shell, one of the defendants.

She did not recuse herself. (Justice Samuel Alito, who owns stock in fossil-fuel companies, has recused himself.)