News & Analysis
January 13, 2025
In a major win for communities working to hold Big Oil accountable for decades of climate lies, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the oil industry’s requests to review a Hawai`i Supreme Court decision that is moving fossil fuel companies closer and closer to trial in state court. The denial puts Honolulu’s case on track to enter the discovery phase — and once again affirms the validity of climate accountability cases across the country.
“Big Oil companies keep fighting a losing battle to avoid standing trial for their climate lies,” CCI President Richard Wiles said about the ruling. “With this latest denial, the fossil fuel industry’s worst nightmare — having to face the overwhelming evidence of their decades of calculated climate deception — is closer than ever to becoming a reality.”
ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, and other oil companies have been seeking to block and delay Honolulu’s lawsuit to make polluters pay for the climate damages they have knowingly caused for decades since it was first filed in 2020. In 2023, the Hawai`i Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision to permit the case to move forward toward trial in state court, writing that Honolulu’s complaint “clearly seeks to challenge the promotion and sale of fossil-fuel products without warning and abetted by a sophisticated disinformation campaign” and that oil companies’ arguments claiming otherwise “fail.”
Oil defendants urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review that ruling but today the high court denied that request. The Justice Department had urged the justices to deny Big Oil’s request to consider the Honolulu case. This marks the fourth time since 2023 the Supreme Court has declined to consider an appeal from fossil fuel companies aiming to escape facing accountability in state court, and the first time the Court has considered the issue of federal preemption.
The justices’ denial of the fossil fuel industry’s request not only clears the path to trial for Honolulu, but also in dozens of other cases against Big Oil companies that seek to make these major polluters pay their fair share of the climate damages they’ve caused.
“Honolulu is poised to obtain more evidence of Big Oil's decades-long campaign of climate deception through the discovery process,” said CCI Managing Attorney Corey Riday-White following the Hawai`i Supreme court ruling, “and we're one giant step closer to that evidence getting in front of a jury tasked with deciding whether these polluters are liable for billions in climate damages."
Image: CBP photo by Glenn Fawcett via Flickr
