The Supreme Court majority would not allow Alabama and 18 other Republican states to step in and block dozens of climate lawsuits filed by Democrat states against energy companies. Justices Thomas and Alito dissented.
California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island filed over two dozen lawsuits against energy companies claiming they knew fossil fuels were dangerous. The ultimate goal is to make energy too expensive for people to use.
Alabama and 18 other Republican-run states sought to block the climate change lawsuits on the basis that California and the others were unconstitutionally attempting to dictate interstate energy policy beyond their own borders via the use of tort lawsuits. The states argue that this practice infringes on the federal government’s exclusive authority to regulate interstate emissions. The group requested to file a complaint directly with the Supreme Court as a dispute between states themselves, invoking the Court’s rarely-used original jurisdiction.
California and the other defendant states challenged the filing and argued that the arguments Alabama and the others were seeking to raise could be raised by the energy companies themselves in the climate change lawsuits.
The Court, without comment from the majority, declined to allow Alabama and the others to file their complaint before the justices Monday.
Justice Samuel Alito, in which Thomas chastised the justices for eschewing their responsibility to hear disputes between states. Thomas wrote that “the Court’s assumption that it has ‘discretion to decline review’ in suits between States is ‘suspect’ at best.”
Thomas says, “This discretionary approach is a modern invention that the Court has never persuasively justified.” He wrote that the Court’s decision to make only “sparing use” of original jurisdiction is “part of a broader policy” that seeks to limit the Court’s caseload relating to disputes between states, which have the potential to become overwhelming in modern society.
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