Big Oil allies wage unprecedented campaign to shield polluters from facing trial

A widespread dark money campaign and a “highly unusual” request from state officials aim to protect Big Oil from facing accountability.

Fossil fuel industry allies have launched a widespread and unprecedented dark money campaign calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to shield Big Oil companies from facing trial in dozens of climate accountability lawsuits across the U.S., according to multiple media reports. 

Oil majors have urged the Supreme Court to overturn a Hawai`i Supreme Court decision that allowed the City and County of Honolulu’s historic climate deception lawsuit against Big Oil companies to go to trial. On Monday, the justices asked the Department of Justice to weigh in on the issue before deciding whether or not to hear Big Oil’s pleas to escape accountability. 

Honolulu is suing ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, Sunoco, and other fossil fuel companies in an effort to make them pay for the climate damages they knowingly inflicted on Honolulu. The community has experienced climate change impacts, including worsening droughts, coastal erosion, and supercharged storms, that the oil industry knew decades ago their products would cause. 

“This lawsuit stands up to protect Honolulu’s taxpayers by putting the responsibility to pay for climate-related damages back on Big Oil where it belongs,” said Honolulu City Council Budget Chair Joey Manahan when the city and county jointly filed in March 2020. “Fossil fuel companies have known for decades that their profits were coming directly at the expense of frontline communities like ours.”

The oil companies have been attempting to block or delay the case at every turn – including their latest appeal to the Supreme Court.

In the weeks leading up to the Supreme Court’s decision, a powerful dark money campaign — which reporters connected to “architect of the Supreme Court” Leonard Leo — emerged in the form of a website, paid social media ads, and pro-industry op-eds in largely right-wing outlets, all urging the high court to take Big Oil’s appeal and protect the industry from facing accountability for its decades of climate deception.

“I have never, ever seen this kind of overt political campaign to influence the court like this,” Patrick Parenteau, professor and senior climate policy fellow at Vermont Law School, told The Guardian in an article that revealed ties between Chevron and a public relations firm working on behalf of the dark money campaign. 

The media push came at the same time that 19 Republican attorneys general made a “highly unusual” request for the Supreme Court to block five states — California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Rhode Island — from pursuing their own lawsuits to hold Big Oil accountable for climate lies and damages. The attorneys general of Minnesota, Connecticut, and New Jersey separately called the effort “absurd,” “pure partisan theater,” and a “desperate stunt.”

"In our profession it is considered pretty untoward for attorneys to try to influence judicial outcomes through the media as baldly as we’re seeing here," Jenny Rushlow, dean of the Maverick Lloyd School for the Environment at Vermont Law and Graduate School, told E&E News. "Between the media campaign and the recent lawsuit from conservative state AGs, the oil companies’ desperation is showing."

These efforts underscore how fearful the oil industry is of facing accountability.

“Big Oil companies are fighting desperately to avoid trial in lawsuits like Honolulu’s, which would expose the evidence of the fossil fuel industry’s climate lies for the entire world to see,” said CCI President Richard Wiles. “Communities everywhere are paying dearly for the massive damages caused by Big Oil’s decades-long climate deception. The people of Honolulu and other communities across the country deserve their day in court to hold these companies accountable.”