A coalition of 19 state attorneys general, led by Steve Marshall of Alabama, is suing five other states — California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and Rhode Island — saying the latter group’s litigation seeking billions of dollars in damages from fossil-fuel companies for their role in the alleged “climate crisis” would undermine U.S. energy security and jeopardize the livelihoods of Americans.
In their May 23 complaint filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, these red-state attorneys general assert that California and its climate allies “are threatening to weaken our national energy system through tort litigation under their state laws and in their state courts.” They add that “attempts by defendant states to impose liability or obtain equitable relief from energy companies for emissions by or in plaintiff states (including by targeting protected speech) is unconstitutional and beyond the competence of defendants to prosecute.”
Far more than a mere shakedown of energy companies by avaricious blue states, the attack on fossil-fuel producers is a scheme to use state tort laws and state courts to regulate out-of-state emissions and thus control energy use nationwide. Rhode Island, for example, seeks compensatory damages for harm from “dire climate-related effects” from certain greenhouse-gas emissions. It doesn’t matter whether emissions come from blue states, Alabama or across the planet. “The effects are all the same and, as a result, they are seeking to punish energy companies for selling their products anywhere,” the lawsuit argues.
And it’s not just the companies that will bear the brunt of the punishment.
“The theory advanced by these states is truly radical. A small gas station in rural Alabama could owe money to the people of Minnesota simply for selling a gallon of gas. The customer might even be liable, too,” Alabama’s Marshall said in a statement. “These states are welcome to enforce their preferred policies within their jurisdiction, but they do not have the authority to dictate our national energy policy.”
“If the Supreme Court lets them continue, California and its allies will imperil access to affordable energy for every American,” Marshall added. “That would threaten our national security and harm millions of Americans already struggling to pay for gas and groceries. To protect Alabama citizens and constitutional order, we had no choice but to sue.”
The reference to the Constitution is crucial to getting the Supreme Court to step in and put an end to the blue states’ extraterritorial power grab. “While the Constitution preserves as expansive realm of state sovereignty, that authority ends at each state’s borders,” Marshall wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “Alabama doesn’t get to say what law applies to California, and Hawaii can’t regulate conduct in Indiana.”
The case, Alabama v. California, is the latest legal skirmish pitting blue jurisdictions seeking to impose their energy policies on the rest of the nation against red states and fossil-fuel producers opposing those efforts.
Dozens of lawsuits against oil and gas companies (many of them funded by the Rockefeller Family Fund) have been filed in state courts in the last few years. They claim that the companies have violated a variety of state laws, including statutes covering consumer protection, nuisance, failure to warn, fraud, and racketeering — all related to the companies’ emissions of greenhouse gases. In addition to states cited in Alabama v. California, jurisdictions suing the oil and gas companies include Massachusetts, New York, the cities of Chicago, Honolulu, New York, and Boulder, Colo., along with several Native American tribes.
Knowing that climate-obsessed jurisdictions are relishing the home-court advantage provided by state courts, the fossil-fuel companies — now joined by the 19 red-state attorneys general — want the proceedings shifted to federal courts.
So far, their efforts have fallen short. In April 2023, for example, the Supreme Court declined an appeal by ExxonMobil and other oil companies to move most of the cases filed against them from state to federal court. If the Supreme Court continues to remain aloof, these cases — beginning with Massachusetts — will go to trial in a few months, kicking off litigation that could last for years.
All this comes amid mounting concerns over how the nation is to meet its growing energy needs at a time when the Biden administration, deep-blue jurisdiction, and deep-pocketed foundations are undertaking a concerted effort to block access to affordable and reliable energy.
The vaunted (and heavily taxpayer-funded) transition to green energy is colliding headlong with developments that this elite-driven agenda did not foresee. They include consumers shunning EVs, local resistance to wind and solar plantations, threats to grid stability caused by increased reliance on intermittent renewable energy, soaring household energy costs, and skyrocketing demand for power by proliferating, energy-hungry, artificial intelligence-driven data centers.
Another way to put this is to say that the blue states’ assault on the nation’s energy security could not have come at a worse time.
Bonner Russell Cohen is a senior policy analyst with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.