News & Analysis
March 31, 2021
Minnesota’s lawsuit seeking to hold Exxon and two other architects of climate deception accountable for violating the state’s consumer protection laws belongs in state court, a federal judge ruled today, handing fossil fuel corporations their latest defeat in the growing number of climate liability cases across the country.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and Koch Industries in state court last year for misleading and defrauding Minnesotans about climate change through a decades-long “campaign of deception.” The lawsuit asks the court to disgorge the corporations of all profits made as a result of their unlawful conduct, as well as fund a science-based public education campaign about climate change.
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Exxon and its co-defendants — as they have in every other similar case — removed Minnesota’s lawsuit to federal court, trotting out well-worn but failed arguments that effectively delay proceedings and mischaracterize Minnesota’s lawsuit as an effort to regulate emissions.
But on Wednesday, U.S. District Court Chief Judge John R. Tunheim ruled against the oil and gas defendants, ordering the case back to state court, where it was originally filed, and making clear that Minnesota’s case is a “well-pleaded” consumer protection lawsuit that targets fraud and misinformation (i.e. lying), not national climate policy.
“The Complaint only requires a court to determine whether Defendants engaged in a misinformation campaign that ran afoul of Minnesota’s consumer protection statutes and common law, and whether the State can demonstrate that those alleged violations of discrete state laws caused harm to Minnesota and Minnesota consumers,” Tunheim wrote. “...the State here does not bring claims capable of addressing the panoply of social, environmental, and economic harms posed by climate change. The State’s Complaint, far more simply, seeks to address one particular feature of the broader problem—Defendants’ alleged misinformation campaign.”
Ellison celebrated the ruling in a statement. “This is the 11th federal court to come to the same conclusion—that climate damage and deception lawsuits filed in state court belong in state court,” he said. “We are eager to prepare for trial in state court to pursue our claims on behalf of all Minnesotans.”
Ellison’s lawsuit was the first to name both API and Koch Industries as a defendant in the growing number of climate fraud and damages lawsuits. The state of Delaware and the cities of Hoboken, New Jersey, and Annapolis, Maryland, have since followed suit, naming API as a defendant in their own climate fraud and damages lawsuits.
Judge Tunheim also denied industry requests to put his ruling on hold pending both an upcoming decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on a procedural issue in Baltimore’s climate damages suit, as well as a request from Exxon and other fossil fuel companies for the high court to review another Big Oil defeat in Oakland and San Francisco’s climate damages lawsuit.
No surprise, Exxon, Koch, and API have already announced plans to appeal Tunheim’s ruling. These corporate polluters will continue to delay justice as long as they can, but thanks to Judge Tunheim’s ruling, the people of Minnesota are now one step closer to having their rightful day in state court.
