Case

No. 25-170 in the Supreme Court of the United States: Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc., et al., Petitioners, v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, et al., Respondents.

Abstract

Global climate change presents many complex and intractable legal and policy questions. Assuming this Court has jurisdiction, the legal questions in this case are comparatively simple and straightforward. Nothing in federal law, let alone the Constitution, preempts state-law claims seeking relief from injuries allegedly caused or exacerbated by petitioners’ conduct.

At issue in this case is whether allegedly aggrieved parties, including subnational governments, may seek redress under state law from defendants otherwise subject to state court jurisdiction for harms allegedly caused or contributed to by petitioners’ conduct. In order to succeed, respondents will ultimately need to show that the damages they allege were caused by actions taken by defendants, that such actions are within the jurisdiction of state courts, and that such actions may be the subject of tort liability under state law. Allowing this case to proceed does not allow any State to impose a universal rule on all fossil fuel producers, let alone on all greenhouse gas emissions around the globe. The fact that emissions “cannot be unmixed and traced,” Pet’rs’ Br. 28, may complicate respondents’ ability to prove their case, but it does not justify—let alone require—preemption of their claims.

State law—statutes, regulations, and common law court decisions—has played an essential role in this nation’s history of environmental protection. Resort to state law should not be foreclosed merely because such claims threaten economically important interests or rely upon expansive theories of liability or attenuated chains of causation. If such suits are to be preempted, that is a job for Congress, not the courts.

Document Type

Brief

Publication Date

2026

Comments

On Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Colorado

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