News & Analysis
April 23, 2025
In another win for communities fighting to hold Big Oil accountable for decades of climate lies, a court this week ruled that the District of Columbia’s climate deception lawsuit against four of the world’s biggest oil companies can continue advancing toward trial. The court’s ruling is the latest decision in a growing number of cases across the country — including Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont, Honolulu, and Boulder — that bring communities closer to putting fossil fuel majors on trial for their campaign of climate deception.
First filed in 2020, D.C.’s case charges ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP with misleading consumers about the climate harms of their products in violation of D.C.’s consumer protection laws. The fossil fuel defendants have fought to keep the evidence of their lies from being heard in a local D.C. court for years, but were unable to convince Judge Yvonne Williams to dismiss the case.
Williams rejected oil defendants’ arguments that D.C.’s lawsuit included “cherry-picked” examples of deception, finding that “[i]t is plausible, at the very least, that the District has instead diligently pieced together a decades-long story of deceit,” and that the evidence should be heard by a jury.
Williams also found that, despite oil defendants’ common argument that their climate denial and greenwashing statements didn’t impact public perceptions of the role of fossil fuels in climate change, “[r]easonable consumers can be aware of the concept of climate change and still be deceived by an oil company’s clever advertising,” or “clever omissions.”
The oil giants argued that they could not be held liable for climate lies told by front groups and trade associations — of which the fossil fuel defendants were members and partial funders. While Williams noted that the court was "not now in a position to decide" whether the defendants' relationship with the front groups could result in liability, she declined to dismiss the claim at this stage, writing that “[a] jury could very well find that (1) BP Defendants understood the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions, and (2) funded, controlled, and participated in third-party associations that (3) misrepresented to the public that there was a lack of consensus on the causes and effects of climate change.”
Williams dismissed just one of the District’s claims, which alleged that BP’s representation of a specific gasoline additive was misleading to consumers, and rejected all other attempts to dismiss the case.
D.C.’s case is now closer than ever to trial — a threat the fossil fuel industry is scrambling to avoid. Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that fossil fuel lobbyists are trying to secure a congressional waiver that could grant blanket immunity from climate accountability lawsuits. Hundreds of climate advocacy groups, including CCI, have urged Democratic leaders to oppose any attempts to pass a liability waiver for oil companies in any form.
“Big Oil companies have fueled the climate crisis and deceived the public about it for decades — and now, thanks to the efforts of D.C. and other communities, the fossil fuel industry’s day of legal reckoning is closer than ever,” CCI President Richard Wiles said about the ruling. “As communities across the U.S. fight to hold these deceitful corporations accountable for the harm they’ve caused, it’s vital that members of Congress reject Big Oil’s attempts to secure legal immunity and protect access to the courts.”
