The Maryland Supreme Court Tuesday ruled against three local governments that filed lawsuits against energy producers, alleging they had suffered damages as a result of climate change. 

The ruling was another blow to what opponents are calling “climate litigation complex.” They say this well-funded campaign seeks to impose national anti-fossil fuel policies through the courts. It includes law firms that stand to profit handsomely from any settlements, as well as an effort to bias judges who may oversee the cases by providing them climate science training materials that are produced by activists and lawyers involved in climate litigation.  

“The Maryland Supreme Court got it right. Its ruling reflects the growing trend among state and federal courts that state law cannot govern interstate and international emissions, the global production and sale of energy or global climate change,” Phil Goldberg, special counsel for the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, said in a statement. 

Court: "Cases involving regulation of interstate pollution arise under federal law"

In Tuesday’s 3-2 decision, the court dismissed lawsuits filed by the City of Baltimore, the City of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County. The decision, written by Justice Brynja Booth, argued that state common law has never applied to the conduct the plaintiffs allege is caused by global greenhouse gas emissions. 

“The local governments, through their various state law claims, are seeking to regulate air emissions beyond their jurisdictional boundaries. For over a century, the United States Supreme Court has held that cases involving regulation of interstate pollution arise under federal law. Under the United States Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, we conclude that any state law claims are displaced by federal common law, ” Booth wrote.  

Booth offered scathing criticisms of the local governments’ central claims, which are the basis for virtually all the lawsuits in the nationwide litigation campaign. The local governments, Booth noted, were seeking damages for injuries they argue were all due to human-caused global warming.

“To state the obvious, global warming is created by global consumption. Given that Maryland accounts for only a fraction of global carbon dioxide emissions, Maryland’s emissions alone cannot possibly be responsible for causing the local governments’ alleged injuries,” Booth wrote. 

Booth went on to point out that if the defendants had provided warning labels on their products sold in Maryland, and every consumer in the state had heeded the warnings and refused to use the products, it “would have been a drop in the bucket” as far as any reductions in global warming. 

“Viewing the allegations of the complaint in the light most favorable to the local governments, they are necessarily seeking damages for harms attributed to all interstate and international emissions combined — plain and simple,” Booth wrote. 

State courts split

The Maryland court came to different conclusions than the Supreme Courts of Hawaii and Colorado, each of which allowed similar cases to proceed in state courts. The U.S. Supreme Court will consider a challenge to the Colorado case. 

Opponents of the nationwide climate litigation campaign argue that the activists coordinating with local governments to file these lawsuits are perverting the court system to take on the role that’s legally reserved for the legislature — making laws. "This ruling is a clear reminder that courts are not venues for policy activism or speculative science,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, said in a statement. 

Sara Gross, chief of the affirmative litigation division in the Baltimore City Department of Law, said in a statement that they don’t view the case as a means to set emissions policy. 

"We agree with Justice (Peter) Killough's dissent when he states clearly and plainly that, 'The Majority's conclusion that these cases are tantamount to emissions regulation is not a finding — it is a prediction about what discovery would show, dressed up as a legal conclusion and deployed to close the courthouse door before discovery could confirm or refute it. That is not how motions to dismiss work. And it is not how preemption analysis works,'" Gross said. 

Opponents of the litigation campaign also argue that these cases, if they were successful, would drive up the cost of energy for everyone. Virtually all products are produced with energy from fossil fuels, or they contain materials derived from petroleum. So any settlements would ultimately be paid by all consumers. 

"Maryland’s Supreme Court should be the first of more high courts, including the Supreme Court, to come to their senses. They should reject the perversion of state tort law to interfere with national control over the energy industry. The rise in oil prices due to the Iran War should underscore the national interests at stake,” John Yoo, professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, said in a statement. 

A critical moment

The Maryland ruling comes at a time when the climate litigation campaign is running into considerable trouble. Judges have dismissed climate lawsuits filed by Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the state of New Jersey and the state of Delaware. 

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in February to hear a case brought by oil companies facing a lawsuit filed by the city and county of Boulder, Colorado in 2018. How the court rules could determine the fate of the nationwide climate litigation campaign. 

The Maryland Supreme Court ruling “comes at a critical moment by sharpening the split among the state and federal courts just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would consider these very issues in response to a similar case brought by Boulder, Colorado,” Goldberg with the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project said.