A judge for the Baltimore City Circuit Court threw out a lawsuit originally filed by the city in 2018 seeking damages from 25 major oil companies over climate change.
The city had argued these companies—including British Petroleum, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Hess, Marathon, and Shell—caused a public nuisance in Baltimore because of their carbon-dioxide emissions and allegedly also mislead the public about the damages their products would do to the environment.
Baltimore had also argued it was not seeking the abatement of carbon-dioxide emissions from these companies, but merely just damages from injuries caused by them. The court rejected this argument.
‘Constitution … Does Not Allow’
“This court finds that Baltimore’s complaint is entirely about addressing the injuries of global climate change and seeking damages for such alleged injuries,” Judge Videtta Brown wrote in her opinion. “The explanation by Baltimore that it only seeks to address and hold Defendants accountable for a deceptive misinformation campaign is simply a way to get in the back door what they cannot get in the front door.
“Whether the complaint is characterized one way or another, the analysis and answer are the same—the Constitution’s federal structure does not allow the application of state law to claims like those presented by Baltimore,” Brown’s opinion states. “Global pollution-based complaints were never intended by Congress to be handled by individual states.”
Brown also ruled that the U.S. government has not deemed the oil companies’ products as dangerous or outlawed or limited their sale.
“The Defendants’ products have not been deemed dangerous in and of themselves,” Brown said. “Fossil fuels are a lawful consumer product guided and regulated by the EPA.”
Arguments Make Everyone Liable
Any “duty to warn” meriting legal action for the burning fossil fuels is excessive, because if taken at face value it would have to be “extended to every single human being on the planet whose use of fossil fuel products may have contributed to global climate change, ultimately affecting Baltimore and its residents,” Brown declared
Brown was appointed to the District Court of Maryland by Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) in 2008.
‘Well-Reasoned Opinion’
Climate policy is rightly the realm of Congress and the federal government, not state or local attorneys, Theodore Boutrous Jr., Chevron’s counsel, told The Washington Free Beacon in a statement.
“The Court’s well-reasoned opinion recognizes that climate policy cannot be advanced by the unconstitutional application of state law to regulate global emissions,” Boutrous said. “As the court stated, Baltimore’s claims are ‘beyond the limits of Maryland state law’ and ‘cannot survive because they are preempted by federal common law (and the Clean Air Act).’
“The meritless state tort cases now being orchestrated by a small group of plaintiffs’ lawyers only detract from legitimate progress toward a lower carbon global energy system,” Boutrous’s statement continued.
Other Cases, Other Jurisdictions
Baltimore’s climate lawsuit against oil companies was spearheaded by the San Francisco-based law firm Sher Edling, part of the Arabella Advisors far left-wing dark-money network, which received $2.5 million in grants through Arabella’s New Venture Fund in 2022, and $8 million from dark money groups overall. Sher Edling has also brought forward similar climate cases in California, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.
The plaintiffs, unable to convince Congress to enact the comprehensive limits on fossil fuel use they desire, are, in defiance of democracy, attempting to legislate through the courts, says H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, at The Heartland Institute.
“Judge Brown is correct, the plaintiffs are trying to get through the back door, what they’ve been unable to get through the front,” said Burnett. “Congress has repeatedly considered taxes and other limits on fossil fuel use to fight supposedly dangerous climate change, but none has ever passed.
“Congress alone is delegated the power to regulate interstate commerce under the Constitution; states can’t legally do it through legislation, unless Congress grants them a waiver, which is almost always a bad idea, and they certainly can’t do it through the courts, which is why repeated courts, both state and federal, have rejected similar claims in different jurisdictions, most recently in neighboring Delaware, in January 2024,” Burnett said.
Tim Benson (tbenson@heartland.org) is a senior policy analyst with Heartland Impact.