Minnesota is one step closer to putting Big Oil on trial after Supreme Court decision

Minnesota is closer than ever to presenting evidence of ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and Koch Industries’ climate deception in a state courtroom after the U.S. Supreme Court denied the companies’ petition to stop the case from proceeding in local court. The decision marks the third time the justices declined to entertain Big Oil’s attempts to overturn lower court rulings in favor of communities fighting to hold them accountable.

When Minnesota filed its climate accountability lawsuit in 2020, the state had already suffered billions of dollars in climate damages from the oil industry’s deception, according to the complaint. In the years since the filing, Exxon and the other defendants have continuously fought to avoid accountability in state court while Minnesotans are shouldering the economic burden of the climate crisis, including warmer winters that pose a major threat to the state’s economy. The state’s lawsuit asks the court to order the companies to disgorge all profits made as a result of their unlawful conduct and to fund a corrective public education campaign about climate change, among other remedies.

In a statement following the decision, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison noted that the ruling aligns with 25 federal court decisions across the country that have all found “that cases like ours rest on these defendants’ failures to warn and their campaigns of deception around their products’ contributions to the climate crisis.”

“[T]he defendants’ behavior has delayed the transition to alternative energy sources and a lower carbon economy, resulting in dire impacts on Minnesota’s environment and enormous costs to Minnesotans and the world,” Ellison said. “Now, the case can move forward in state court, where it was properly filed, and we can begin to hold these companies accountable for their wrongful conduct.”