News & Analysis
March 24, 2023
Minnesota won a major victory in its climate fraud lawsuit against ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute yesterday, when a federal appeals court agreed that the state’s lawsuit can proceed in state court, where it was filed.
The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit marks the sixth unanimous circuit court decision on this issue against fossil fuel companies, which have fought relentlessly to escape trials over their climate lies in state court.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed the lawsuit under the state’s consumer protection law in 2020 to hold the polluters accountable for lying to consumers for decades about their products’ role in the climate crisis. It 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.
“Imagine how much farther along we’d be in the transition to a low-carbon economy if it weren’t for the defendants’ decades of deception and disinformation,” Ellison told E&E in response to yesterday’s ruling.
Minnesota’s victory comes one week after the U.S. Department of Justice added its support to communities seeking to put Big Oil companies on trial in state court.
In 2021, CCI filed a brief in support of Minnesota’s efforts with a coalition of environmental groups and scholars. The friend-of-the-court brief provided the Eighth Circuit with evidence of the fossil fuel industry’s history of climate deception, and it urged the court to allow Minnesota’s case to proceed in state court.
After years of delay, it’s finally time for Big Oil companies to face the evidence of their climate lies in court. Thanks to this latest victory, the people of Minnesota are now one step closer to putting them on trial.
