News & Analysis
February 28, 2024
Communities in Maryland are closer than ever to putting Big Oil on trial after a federal appeals court this week once again rejected industry attempts to escape facing accountability for their climate lies. The ruling continues the unbroken string of judicial wins for local governments seeking to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their decades-long campaign of climate deception in state court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit unanimously rejected oil majors’ — including ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and the American Petroleum Institute — attempts to stop cases in Annapolis and Anne Arundel County, Maryland, from moving forward in state court, where they were originally filed. The Fourth Circuit issued a similar ruling in favor of the City of Baltimore’s climate accountability lawsuit in 2022.
Oil and gas companies have attempted to remove many of the climate accountability lawsuits they’re facing from state court, only to be repeatedly shut down by courts time and again.
Federal district courts across the nation have now rejected these same oil industry arguments a total of 17 times, including in Vermont, Minnesota, D.C., California, Hawai’i, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, South Carolina, and Colorado. Those rulings have been affirmed 11 times by eight separate federal appeals courts.
“The companies have sought—over and over and over—to remove the cases to federal court,” wrote Judge Toby Heytens in the unanimous ruling for Annapolis and Anne Arundel County. “By our count, that gambit has failed in at least ten cases already. The eleventh time is not the charm.”
In 2021, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson wrote that Big Oil’s arguments for federal jurisdiction in accountability lawsuits brought by state and local governments have “a batting average of .000.” More than two years later, that’s still the case.
