Mar. 10 — Lawsuits seeking billions of dollars from Texas-based Exxon Mobil, Chevron and other large oil companies can move forward after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied to hear a request by a coalition of 19 Republican states to block the litigation.
States led by Democrats, including California and New Jersey, are claiming the companies sold products that drove up carbon dioxide emissions, despite warnings from scientists that began in the 1950s and were later confirmed by their own research.
The ruling marked another setback for the oil sector and its Republican allies in their longstanding efforts to block the litigation, which argues companies should pay billions of dollars in damages to states impacted by climate change and move to dramatically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
"This desperate sideshow was just another attempt to bail out Big Oil from standing trial for their climate lies," Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said in a statement. "Now these states can continue advancing their efforts to present the evidence of Big Oil's climate deception in court and hold these companies accountable."
A spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, the industry's largest lobbying group, called the climate lawsuits "nothing more than a distraction from important issues and waste of taxpayer resources.
"We're disappointed that the Supreme Court has declined recent opportunities to provide clarity on the important legal issues raised in these cases. But ultimately, climate policy is an issue for Congress to debate, not the court system," he said.
Exxon and Chevron did not respond to a request for comment.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the ruling, arguing the court had wrongly rejected hearing a lawsuit, "involving nearly half the States in the nation, which alleges serious constitutional violations."
In January, the Supreme Court denied a similar request for a hearing by oil companies seeking to block climate litigation brought by the city of Honolulu.
Texas was among the 16 states that filed a brief in support of the oil sector, arguing the lawsuit threatened to "imperil access to affordable energy and inculpate every State and every person on the planet."
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