Pictured above: Corner of city hall building in Baltimore, Maryland. Image courtesy of Pixy.org
By Abby Wester ‘22
Staff Writer
A lawsuit filed by the city of Baltimore in 2018 against more than a dozen major oil and gas companies has recently been brought to the Supreme Court. The lawsuit requests the companies pay for climate change damages, as they were aware of their negative impact on the environment and misled the public. The Supreme Court’s decision on whether or not to hear the case could set a precedent for future climate change cases.
Baltimore initially filed this lawsuit in Maryland state courts in 2018. The city has faced the wrath of climate change through worsened flooding, fatal heatwaves and infrastructure failures caused by major weather events.
This lawsuit is not the first of its kind. Since 2017, there have been about 20 cases filed against oil and gas companies requesting that they pay for the damages of climate change that they knowingly caused. The legal arguments on behalf of the oil and gas companies rely on the precedent set by a similar 2011 Supreme Court case. In this case, the state of Connecticut filed a lawsuit against an electricity company claiming that they released greenhouse gases that contributed to climate change. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that under federal law, Connecticut could not sue the electricity company for their emissions.
An attorney for the fossil fuel companies being sued by the city of Baltimore argued that since climate change is a global issue, the case should be taken to federal courts. The Supreme Court is now considering whether or not the case should proceed in state court or federal court. This decision is critical. If the case proceeds in state courts, more information can be revealed about the knowledge that the oil and gas companies had about their contributions to climate change. If the lawsuit is debated in federal court, the test case would set a precedent for future climate liability cases.