West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey
CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey is co-leading an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a lawsuit filed by Boulder County and the City of Boulder, Colorado, against major oil and gas producers.
McCuskey says he is doing so to protect West Virginia energy workers and states’ rights. He is co-leading the 24-state amicus, or friend of the court, brief with Alabama AG Steve Marshall.
The brief filed in Suncor Energy v. Boulder County argues that allowing a single Colorado locality to hold the entire energy industry liable for global climate change under state law would unconstitutionally allow one jurisdiction to dictate national energy policy. The brief says that would deal a devastating blow to states such as West Virginia that depend on traditional energy production.
“States, cities or municipalities cannot use local laws to impose their far-left ideology on the rest of the country,” McCuskey said. “This is an attempt to fill their coffers at the expense of the rest of the nation.
“We have fought this kind of climate warfare before and we will continue to fight it, not only to protect our energy industries, but because it’s the right and constitutional thing to do.”
In the appeal, fossil fuel companies are asking the Supreme Court to block local and state governments from using state tort laws to seek damages for climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. Boulder County and the City of Boulder originally filed a lawsuit in 2018 against ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy, seeking to hold the companies financially responsible for the local costs of climate adaptation.
The oil companies say such state-law lawsuits usurp federal authority and risk national economic "chaos" by allowing a single locality to set or influence nationwide energy and climate policy. Boulder and the Colorado Supreme Court maintain that the case is merely a traditional claim seeking damages for in-state harms caused by corporate product promotion.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the lawsuit could proceed in state court, rejecting the companies’ federal preemption defenses. In February, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The justices will address whether state-law tort suits are an impermissible attempt to regulate interstate and/or international energy policies. They also are reviewing whether the court itself has the statutory and Article III jurisdiction to hear the case at all.
McCuskey says the brief is the latest in a series of steps taken by his office has taken to protect West Virginia’s energy interests. In addition to filing lawsuits against Vermont and New York over their state superfund laws, McCuskey has led or joined coalitions to stop regulatory overreach by federal agencies and other states.
West Virginia and Alabama are joined in the brief by Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
