SCOTUS Declines To Hear Cases On Energy Company Liability, UT Public Lands, Vineyard Wind, Air Pollution
The Supreme Court is staying out of heated legal fights over the oil industry’s responsibility to pay up for climate change, ownership of public lands in Utah, environmental review of a major offshore wind project and EPA’s crackdown on smog-forming pollution. In a long list of orders issued Monday, the justices declined to reconsider a 2023 Hawaii Supreme Court ruling that advanced claims from Honolulu officials that fossil fuel producers knowingly lied to the public about the danger of their products and should help foot the bill for flooding, wildfires and other climate impacts.
The high court’s decision to stay out of the Hawaii case could have sweeping effects: Nearly 40 U.S. cities, states and counties have brought similar litigation in state courts against Exxon Mobil, Chevron and other major oil companies. Industry lawyers have warned that the cases will continue to multiply without Supreme Court intervention. If successful, the climate liability cases could cost oil companies billions of dollars. The litigation emulates successful fights against tobacco and opioid manufacturers.
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The justices also will not hear a legal complaint filed last year by the state of Utah that could have given the state control over roughly half the federal lands within its boundaries. The high court had been asked to determine whether the Bureau of Land Management is legally authorized to indefinitely control 18.5 million acres in Utah that have not been authorized for a specific use, such as a national monument. Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox announced in August that the state had filed the legal complaint directly to the Supreme Court. Utah argued that the U.S. Constitution did not grant the federal government the right to hold these “unappropriated” lands indefinitely.
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The Supreme Court on Monday also rejected a case that had the potential to deal a blow to a major offshore wind project off the coast of Massachusetts. The justices said they would not consider claims from the group Nantucket Residents Against Turbines thatfederal agencies failed to consider how the cumulative effects of East Coast offshore wind projects, including Vineyard Wind 1, would affect the endangered North Atlantic right whale. The high court’s move comes asPresident-elect Donald Trump has pledged to pursue “a policy where no windmills are being built.” Vineyard Wind is the first of about 30 offshore wind projects planned along the Eastern Seaboard. It is located 15 miles offshore from Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard and 35 miles from mainland Massachusetts.
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https://www.eenews.net/articles/supreme-court-rejects-climate-lands-wind-air-battles/
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