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Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Big Oil Effort to Crush Climate Lawsuits

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Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

In an aerial view, the ExxonMobil Baytown Refinery is seen on January 13, 2026 in Baytown, Texas. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

“Big Oil’s climate lies are the most consequential and harmful corporate deception campaign in history.”

The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case that could effectively crush efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the climate crisis.

As reported by the New York Times, the court has agreed to hear arguments related to a petition filed by ExxonMobil and Canadian energy firm Suncor related to a 2018 lawsuit by the city of Boulder, Colorado that seeks financial damages from the companies for their role in causing global climate change.

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The Times report noted that dozens of similar lawsuits have been filed by states and municipalities over the last decade, and they generally seek money from energy firms to help mitigate or repair damage done by extreme weather exacerbated by the climate crisis.

According to the Associated Press, attorneys for the energy companies are petitioning to have the case moved from state courts to federal courts that have in the past dismissed similar complaints.

“The use of state law to address global climate change represents a serious threat to one of our nation’s most critical sectors,” the attorneys claimed.

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case comes months after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Boulder’s lawsuit could initiate the discovery process and move toward a trial.

In an interview with the Colorado Sun, Boulder County Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann said that the city wasn’t backing down from its efforts make the fossil fuel industry pay for the damage it’s done.

“The oil companies have tried every avenue to delay our climate accountability case or move it to an out-of-state court system,” said Stolzmann. “As everyone continues to face rising costs that put budgets under pressure, we must hold oil companies accountable for the significant harm they’ve caused our communities.”

Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said that the merits of the Boulder lawsuit are clear, regardless of the Supreme Court’s intervention.

“Big Oil’s climate lies are the most consequential and harmful corporate deception campaign in history,” Wiles said, “and the communities paying the price for that deception deserve to put these companies on trial. Exxon’s desperation to escape accountability does not change the evidence of their wrongdoing or the law that lower courts agree is on Boulder’s side.”

Alyssa Johl, vice president of legal and general counsel at the Center for Climate Integrity, said the Supreme Court should simply affirm lower court rulings stating that “communities like Boulder have the right to seek accountability in their state courts when corporations have knowingly caused local harms.”

Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Continue ReadingSupreme Court Agrees to Hear Big Oil Effort to Crush Climate Lawsuits

Extreme Heat Expected to Impact Millions of Americans Again This Summer

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Heat waves rise near a heat danger warning sign in Death Valley National Park, California.
 (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)

“These are not your grandparents’ heatwaves,” said one meteorologist.

Millions of people in the United States are facing the high likelihood of extreme heat in the coming weeks, with northern states that frequently have relatively temperate summers among those where higher-than-average temperatures are expected this summer, according to federal data.

As The Guardian reported Monday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) new predictions for the summer months state that most of New Mexico and Utah have a 60%-70% chance of hotter-than-normal weather, along with parts of Arizona, Texas, and Colorado.

Houston and the surrounding area has already experienced spiking temperatures that were tied to a heat dome that was positioned over Mexico for several weeks. The high atmospheric pressure drove record-breaking heat across Mexico and in Texas, as well as a powerful storm earlier this month that killed at least seven people and left hundreds of thousands of people in the Houston area without power.

NOAA’s Heat Risk tool showed that on Monday, a significant stretch of southern Texas was experiencing an “extreme” level of heat, defined as including “little to no overnight relief” and affecting the health and safety of “anyone without effective cooling and/or adequate hydration.”

The new tool takes into consideration whether the heat is unusual for the time of the year, whether residents get relief with cooler temperatures in the evenings, and whether temperatures pose an elevated risk of health impacts like heat stroke or heat exhaustion.

NOAA found that the entire Northeast, from Maine to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, has a 40%-50% chance of having above-average temperatures from June through August.

“We can expect another dangerous hot summer season, with daily records already being broken in parts of Texas and Florida,” Kristy Dahl, climate scientist for the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told The Guardian. “As we warm the planet, we are going to see climate disasters pile up and compound against each other because of the lack of resilience in our infrastructure and government systems.”

The predictions come days after the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen released a report, Scorched States, about state laws that protect outdoor workers from extreme heat—and those that don’t.

As many as 2,000 U.S. workers die every year from laboring in extreme heat, said Public Citizen, even though “every workplace illness, injury, and fatality caused by heat stress is avoidable, and relatively simple preventative measures—water, shade, and breaks—have proven extremely effective at protecting workers.”

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s forthcoming heat standard rules are not expected to be finalized until at least 2026, but states including Washington, Colorado, and Minnesota have issued their own labor laws to protect workers from heat-related injuries.

The Guardian pointed out that the extreme heat expected this summer will likely take hold as the Earth transitions away from El Niño—the natural phenomenon that causes ocean temperatures to rise—and toward La Niña.

“As we transition to La Niña, it still looks to be a potentially record-breaking year. That clearly suggests to me that the anthropogenic signal is there,” James Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s atmospheric sciences program, told The Guardian. “I am also worried about the ocean temperatures, which are very warm, particularly as we approach the Atlantic hurricane season.”

“Attribution studies are pretty decisive that heatwaves will continue to be more intense and frequent” as the planet warms, Shepherd said. “These are not your grandparents’ heatwaves.”

Last year, scientists found that neither the hot and dry conditions that led to destructive wildfires in Canada, nor extreme heatwaves that took hold in Europe and North America, would have been as likely to occur without the planetary heating that’s been linked to continued fossil fuel extraction.

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingExtreme Heat Expected to Impact Millions of Americans Again This Summer

‘Disgraceful’ Supreme Court Hands Victory to Trump in 14th Amendment Case

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Original article by JON QUEALLY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Citing 14th Amendment, Michigan Voters File Suit to Bar Trump From 2024 Ballot (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

The 9-0 ruling which reverses a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court, warned one pro-democracy watchdog, “undermines the integrity of our Constitution and emboldens those seeking to disrupt and dismantle our democratic systems.”

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The U.S. Supreme Court delivered Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump a resounding legal victory on Monday by rejecting a push by Colorado voters to have him disqualified from the state’s ballot under a clause of the 14th Amendment on the grounds that the former president was guilty of insurrection due to his actions leading up to and on January 6, 2021.

Though the Colorado Supreme Court last year ruled in favor of the argument to exclude Trump in this year’s election, Monday’s 9-0 ruling said, “Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 [of the 14th Amendment] against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse.”

The decision by the nation’s highest court was unanimous, though Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson—the three liberals on the Court—signed a concurring opinion in the judgment, indicating a varied reason for supporting the underlying decision. In addition to Colorado, officials in Maine and Illinois have moved to remove Trump from the ballot.

“The Supreme Court couldn’t exonerate Trump because the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming, so instead the Justices neutered our Constitution’s built-in defense against insurrectionists and said the facts don’t matter.”

Supporters of the effort to disqualify Trump from seeking public office due to his insurrectionary words and deeds following the 2020 election results, which he refused to accept, condemned the Court for Monday’s ruling.

“This decision is disgraceful,” said Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech For People (FSFP), which pioneered the first litigation under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and co-led the successful Illinois challenge. “The Supreme Court couldn’t exonerate Trump because the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming, so instead the Justices neutered our Constitution’s built-in defense against insurrectionists and said the facts don’t matter.”

Legal experts said the ruling did not hinge on the question of whether or not Trump was, in fact, guilty of insurrection but only that Colorado was not qualified to invoke the 14th Amendment.

“Yes, the Supreme Court ruled for Trump based on only Congress having the power to enforce the 14th amendment,” said Norm Eisen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and an outspoken Trump critic. “But just as important as what they did is what they didn’t do They did not expressly challenge that he was an insurrectionist—and the concurrence emphasizes that finding.”

Common Cause called the ruling a “major setback for democracy” that sets a worrying precedent.

“This decision undermines the integrity of our Constitution and emboldens those seeking to disrupt and dismantle our democratic systems. For over 200 years, all but one of our leaders have abided by the Constitution and practiced the peaceful transfer of power,” said Kathay Feng, the group’s vice president of programs.

“This ruling reverses the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision, and with it, green lights future presidents to intimidate, threaten, and attack Congress into obedience,” Feng added. “Our Constitution depends on checks and balances. Removing states as a check on tyrannical presidents threatens the future of our democracy.”

In its statement, FSFP people said the ruling was “dangerous” as it “encourages Trump–and those who follow his example–to engage in more insurrections and disregard more broadly the Constitution.”

“As one Senator explained in 1866 when advocating for Section 3, ‘the man who has once violated his oath will be more liable to violate his fealty to the Government in the future,'” the group noted. “The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment learned this lesson in blood, and gave us Section 3 to prevent a repeat. With today’s ruling, the Supreme Court has utterly failed in its duty to uphold this constitutional mandate at this critical moment in history. “

Original article by JON QUEALLY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘Disgraceful’ Supreme Court Hands Victory to Trump in 14th Amendment Case