(CN) — The Supreme Court turned down a petition for review Monday from various energy companies seeking to move claims filed against them in Minnesota to federal court.
They noted however, that Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Donald Trump appointee, was in favor of granting the petition for a writ of certiorari.
The state of Minnesota sued the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon Mobil and other affiliate companies in June 2020, claiming their production and promotion of fossil fuels increased greenhouse gas emissions and contributed to climate change.
In the complaint, the state argued that the companies developed a widespread campaign to deceive the public about the dangers of fossil fuels and to undermine the scientific consensus linking fossil fuel emissions to climate change. The suit sought restitution, civil penalties and injunctive relief to remedy harm caused to its citizens for the companies' deceptive marketing and failure to warn.
The energy companies sought to have the case heard in federal court, arguing that the state's claims are governed by federal law and that its redress for injuries was caused by interstate and international emissions. But the court remanded the case back to state court.
After the companies appealed, the Eighth Circuit also dismissed their argument. The court held that removal on the basis of federal common law was "impermissible" because the state did not expressly invoke federal common law as the basis for any of the claims in its complaint.
The circuit judges noted that this was not the first time oil production companies have made such jurisdictional arguments, and that its “sister circuits rejected them in each case.”
In their petition to the Supreme Court, the companies argued that the decision should be reviewed by the justices because it implicates a conflict on whether federal common law exclusively governs claims seeking redress for injuries attributed to interstate greenhouse gas emissions' effects on the global climate.
Attorney Kannon Shanmugam, from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in D.C., argued that under the court of appeals’ logic, a lower federal court is bound by the labels the plaintiff applies to the claims in the complaint, even where federal common law necessarily and exclusively governs the issues pleaded on the face of the complaint.
"Absent review, climate-change cases will continue to proliferate in state courts, resulting in the application of the laws of fifty states to climate-change-related disputes, in conflict with the national-security, economic and energy policies of the United States," Shanmugam wrote in the petition.
The attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A host of states — Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Wyoming — filed an amici curiae brief in favor of the energy companies. The states claimed that their ability to regulate energy and fuel product development and to abate any related air pollution or environmental hazards are threatened if a state can force companies to defend themselves against liability in state court.
"There is no division among the circuits on the question presented, let alone an 'entrenched' one requiring this court’s intervention," Victor Sher, an attorney for the state of Minnesota, wrote in the state's opposition brief to the high court.
"Every court confronting the issue has held that state-law claims like the state’s — which allege petitioners 'mounted an aggressive campaign' to 'mislead consumers and the general public about the scientific consensus around climate change, the relationship between climate change and their fossil-fuel products, and the urgency of the dangers of climate change,' are not removable from state court," Sher added.
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