The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a petition filed by ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy to dismiss a climate‑change lawsuit brought by the City of Boulder, Boulder County, and San Miguel County. The suit, filed in April 2018, accuses the two oil majors of contributing to global warming through their operations and seeks billions of dollars in damages for the city’s residents and taxpayers.
Boulder’s regulators argue that the companies’ greenhouse‑gas emissions have caused significant harm to the local community and that the federal government has failed to enforce climate‑change laws. ExxonMobil and Suncor counter that the claims are pre‑empted by federal law, specifically the Clean Air Act, and that state courts lack jurisdiction over a national issue.
The case reached the Colorado Supreme Court in May 2025, where the state court ruled that the claims were not pre‑empted and could proceed under state law. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case is an appeal of that ruling and marks the first time the high court will weigh in on climate‑accountability litigation.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in its next term, which begins in October. The outcome will determine whether state courts can hold oil companies liable for contributing to climate change, potentially opening the door for similar lawsuits across the country.
The lawsuit seeks more than $2 billion in damages, and the case has attracted attention from policymakers. The Trump administration had previously supported the oil majors’ appeal, arguing that allowing such suits could lead to “every locality in the country could sue essentially anyone in the world for contributing to global climate change.”
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