Great. SCOTUS Will Hear Case On Whether Climate Suit Against Big Energy Can Proceed In State Courts

[hatrack]

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In a second development on Friday, the court agreed to hear an appeal from more than two dozen multinational energy companies that object to a state court lawsuit brought by Baltimore seeking to hold them accountable for their role in changing the earth’s climate. The companies want to move the suit to federal court The case, BP P.L.C. v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, No. 19-1189, is one of more than a dozen state and local governments around the nation have filed seeking compensation for what they said were injuries caused by the energy companies’ conduct.

In its suit, Baltimore said the companies’ “production, promotion and marketing of fossil fuel products, simultaneous concealment of the known hazards of those products and their championing of antiscience campaigns” harmed the city, which “is particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise and flooding.”

The battle, for now, is about whether the suit belongs in state court. Judge Ellen L. Hollander of the Federal District Court in Baltimore rejected what she called the companies’ “laundry list” of reasons for trying to move the Baltimore case to federal court. Such rulings cannot ordinarily be appealed, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ruled in March that no exception applied.

In the Supreme Court, the energy companies argued that the issues in the case require adjudication in federal court. “Resolution of the question presented is particularly important in the context of the ongoing nationwide climate change litigation brought by state and local governments against energy companies,” they wrote. “The question is also of substantial legal and practical importance; indeed, the question is currently arising with acute frequency in climate change lawsuits similar to this one, where the arguments for federal jurisdiction are compelling.”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/us/supreme-court-voting-rights-climate-change.html

[texasfiddler]

1. This is the true reason for the right wing judges