The Supreme Court takes up a lawsuit against oil companies that far exceeds legitimate local authority. When the Supreme Court returns for its new term on Monday, the first case it will hear is which asks whether state and local governments may use state tort laws to impose liability on American companies for the effects of global climate change. Boulder County and the city of Boulder sued Suncor and Exxon Mobil in a Colorado court, claiming their community has been harmed by global climate change.
The plaintiffs seek damages for local harms. Liability would be based not on the company’s actions in Colorado but on the extent its worldwide production and sale of fuels are found to have contributed to greenhouse gases in the global atmosphere. A trial would give a local jury the authority to determine what share of global climate change each American company should be held responsible for.
But one fundamental defect in Boulder’s case hasn’t received as much attention as it deserves: It intrudes directly into foreign policy, a field the Constitution commits to the federal government. The Constitution was designed to ensure that the U.S. would speak with one voice in its dealings abroad. The federal government must be able to decide what obligations the U.S. will accept, what concessions it will seek from other countries, and how responsibility will be apportioned.
Climate policy is a textbook example. Presidents of both parties have treated greenhouse-gas emissions as a global problem that must be handled on the international stage. Boulder’s suit cuts across that national function, asking a state court to impose potentially enormous liability on selected American energy companies for their alleged contribution to a worldwide phenomenon.
Source: Wall Street Journal US Business · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing