San Francisco, Oakland receive support from 16 state AGs in climate change lawsuit
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California Attorney General Rob Bonta, and 15 other attorneys general, filed an amicus brief in federal appeals court supporting Oakland and San Francisco’s climate change lawsuit against five fossil fuel companies.
In their consolidated case, city of Oakland v. BP et al, the California cities claim the fossil fuel companies mislead the public about the known dangers of fossil fuel combustion and exacerbated the effects of climate change. The cities are seeking damages to remedy the impact of sea level rise and similar harms.
“Our state and local governments have a duty to protect the welfare of our residents, and for decades, Big Oil has relied on deceptive tactics to mislead consumers about the harms of fossil fuel use,” Bonta said in a statement.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco was asked in the amicus brief, filed late Friday, to uphold a federal district court ruling and allow the case to proceed in state court.
The amicus brief “supports Oakland and San Francisco’s efforts to hold accountable corporations looking to fill their pockets at the expense of the health and well-being of the American people,” Bonta said.
In the brief, the attorneys general argued state courts are entrusted with, and uniquely capable of, adjudicating state law claims, even when state law claims involve issues of national importance. They also argued the cities’ claims do not “raise a substantial issue of federal law, and fossil fuel companies’ contracts with the military do not entitle the companies to federal jurisdiction.”
“State courts are therefore the most appropriate venue for tort claims ,such as the municipalities’ claims, especially where the ability of a state or its subdivisions to protect the health and welfare of its citizens is at issue,” the attorneys general argued.
Attorneys for the oil companies — which include BP, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — argued in their opening brief the case should be heard in federal court, “because federal law necessarily and exclusively governs claims seeking relief for harms allegedly stemming from interstate and international pollution.”
San Francisco’s offering documents in a 2017 bond sale — which reference climate change — were used by the oil companies to attempt to demonstrate the city couldn’t definitively describe the impact of climate change on seawall rise.
The companies face more than a dozen similar lawsuits from state and local municipalities across the country. The governments are expected to fare better if the cases are heard in state rather than federal court.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined in April to hear five appeals from oil and gas companies seeking to move climate change cases from state to federal court.
Although San Francisco and Oakland originally filed separate cases in state court in September 2017, the cases were removed to federal court and consolidated.
The city attorneys then filed a motion to remand the cases to state court, which the federal district court initially denied. The Ninth Circuit reversed the decision on appeal in May 2020, finding that Oakland and San Francisco’s state nuisance claims do not arise under federal law and granted the cities’ request to remand the cases to state court.
The case is currently pending in Ninth Circuit after the oil companies’ November 2022 appeal of the district court’s decision that the suit belongs in state court.
Bonta was joined by the attorneys general of Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington, and the District of Columbia.
