ExxonKnews
January 24, 2023
“Big Oil peddled the big lie,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said last week following the release of a new study showing Exxon’s acute scientific understanding of climate change preceded its public denial. Facing ever-mounting evidence of their climate deception, and lawsuits seeking to hold them accountable, major fossil fuel companies are clinging to one last-ditch defense: it was all protected free speech.
But does the First Amendment actually shield companies’ commercial public speech from liability, even if that speech amounted to lying about a global crisis with deadly consequences? A new article published this month in the Environmental Law Reporter by Katie Horner, a New York attorney, says it does not.
