CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (February 23, 2026)—The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) today agreed to hear arguments from Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil challenging local governments’ ability to seek relief for climate change damages in state courts. SCOTUS’s approval of the petition will be closely watched given the many previous rulings, including from this Supreme Court, that affirm state courts as the appropriate venue for related cases. Numerous other climate accountability lawsuits filed by states and municipalities have been waiting on the outcome of this petition to move forward with their own cases in state courtrooms across the country. Justice Samuel Alito, despite conflicts of interest leading to his recusal from considering similar petitions, has refused to recuse himself in this instance.
This development comes shortly after the announcement by U.S. House Representative Harriet Hageman that she is crafting a bill to gift fossil fuel companies complete immunity from legal liability, a 2026 priority for the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade association for the oil and gas industry. It also follows a group of fossil fuel funded Attorneys General successfully removing the climate science chapter from a federal judicial manual.
Below is a statement by Dr. Carly Phillips, a research scientist with the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
“The fossil fuel industry is desperately seeking to block the evidence of its decades of deceit from being heard in courtrooms across the country. This development represents one piece of a multipronged campaign by Big Oil to avoid accountability, including through efforts to secure sweeping legal immunity and to undermine the role of climate science in the courtroom.
“I’m disappointed SCOTUS agreed to hear this case, since lower courts have consistently recognized that state courts are the appropriate venue for state-law claims about deception and local damages. This comes at a moment when the fossil fuel industry is pursuing all possible pathways to avoid accountability, including lobbying Congress and state legislatures for legal liability waivers, raising serious concerns about their coordinated effort to shut down these cases before they can proceed to trial.
“Communities have long relied on state courts to seek remedies for local harms and an industry-friendly ruling in this case could jeopardize access to justice for people across the country. As the fossil fuel industry’s options for evading litigation narrow, it’s imperative to pushback against immunity laws like those proposed in Utah, Oklahoma and Congress and to closely monitor coordinated efforts to shut down climate accountability cases—efforts that industry trade groups have explicitly identified as a priority for them in the year ahead. The future of climate justice depends on people being able to hold big polluters accountable in the courts.
“Justice has been delayed for far too long—it’s time these cases are heard in state court on their merits.”
Additional UCS Resources:
- “Decades of Deceit” report on fossil fuel companies’ coordinated climate disinformation campaigns dating back to the 1950s
- Blog post forecasting 2026 climate litigation trends
- Blog post highlighting climate accountability legal victories in 2025
- Statement on Utah, Oklahoma fossil fuel immunity shield bills