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The Maryland Supreme Court has decisively rejected efforts by state and local governments to cash-in on the so-called climate crisis. The Court’s March 24 opinion in Mayor and City Council of Baltimore v. B.P. P.L.C. holds that state-law damages claims against fossil fuel energy companies for alleged local harms caused by global climate change are displaced by federal law.
Rejecting the plaintiffs’ and dissenting opinion’s characterizations about the nature of the suit, the Court explained that “no amount of creative pleading can masquerade the fact that the local governments are attempting to utilize state law to regulate global conduct that is purportedly causing global harm.”
The Maryland Supreme Court's decision strikes a blow to dozens of similar state-court suits that state and local governments have filed around the United States.
The Court’s opinion that regulation of interstate pollution involves “uniquely federal interests” that preclude state-law damages suits for global climate change, aligns with the amicus brief that the Atlantic Legal Foundation, joined by the Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel, filed in the case. The amicus brief argued that “global climate change claims implicate uniquely federal interests that transcend state tort law and the geographic borders of any State.”
Similarly, the Court’s observation that “[o]ne cannot isolate these local governments’ claims from the continuum of the harmful effects of global warming on the entire planet” parallels the amicus brief’s argument that “alleged liability for causing global climate change cannot be fragmented into myriad state and local pieces.”
As part of its free-enterprise and sound-science advocacy missions, ALF has filed amicus briefs in several pending climate-change tort suits, including in Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, which the U.S. Supreme Court has accepted for review.
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