(The Center Square) – Legal experts and energy insiders are praising a Bucks County, Pennsylvania, judge’s dismissal of the county’s lawsuit attempting to force six major oil and gas companies to pay for the effects of climate change.
As judges have ruled in similar cases filed in Maryland, New York and elsewhere. Bucks County Judge Stephen Corr ruled late Friday that the lawsuit oversteps local authority and the issue falls under federal law.
Donald Kochan, Law and Economics Center director at George Mason University, told The Center Square in a phone interview that the court got it right.
“For several years, the plaintiffs in these cases have been trying to claim that the cases are not about emissions at all, but instead that they were only about sort of deception campaigns and deception claims,” he said.
“No matter what the carefully crafted words of the complaint say, the complaint is really about the effects of emissions, and therefore squarely falls into the place already covered by the [federal] Clean Air Act,” he added.
Kochan added that there’s precedent for this type of decision.
“The judge recognized that several other jurisdictions had already reached the conclusion that the climate change cases are delving into areas of emissions that are the exclusive province of the federal government – particularly that Congress has preempted state law in this area, including state-based litigation and state causes of action that might try to regulate emissions,” he said.
Chevron attorney Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. also supported the decision. Chevron was a defendant in the case
“As Judge Corr declared, his decision joins the ‘growing chorus of state and federal courts across the United States, singing from the same hymnal,’ concluding the ‘our federal structure does not allow Pennsylvania law, or any State’s law, to address’ climate change lawsuits,’” Boutrous said in a statement. “The court also got it right when it expressed ‘concern about the manner in which the Commissioners went about hiring counsel and filing this lawsuit,’ and found that ‘the conduct of the Commissioners violated the spirit of’ Pennsylvania’s open government act.”
Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, said this was a major blow for those going after oil and gas producers.
“The trend is clear. Many courts are smoking out climate lawsuits as a far-left bid to hijack national energy policy,” Isaac said in a statement. “The Bucks County court joins courts in Maryland, New Jersey, New York and elsewhere in dismissing climate claims against American energy producers. These decisions reflect a growing consensus that climate lawsuits are impermissible.”
OH Skinner, executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, expressed a similar sentiment.
Skinner said it was a blow to the Green New Deal agenda.
“These climate nuisance suits are the left’s best plan for enacting the Green New Deal and forcing a leftwing lifestyle on the entire country,” he said in a statement. “This coordinated lawfare campaign is terrible for working families, who just need cheap and reliable energy to power their homes and appliances. It is always a good day when a court spots these cases for what they are – a boon to shady trial lawyers, and a disaster for consumers and job creators.”
Corr agreed with the defendants that Pennsylvania courts cannot apply state law to claims about global greenhouse gas emissions and how they impact the climate.
“We are compelled to dismiss this lawsuit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction,” Corr wrote. “Our federal structure does not allow Pennsylvania’s law, or any State’s law, to address the claims raised in Bucks County’s Complaint.”
Bucks County filed a lawsuit in March 2024, alleging that Shell, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and the American Petroleum Institute have been aware for decades that emitting carbon into the atmosphere negatively impacts the environment but misled the public about it.
Although the county argued the case was about consumer deception, the judge noted the repeated use of the word “emissions” in the complaint – more than 100 times – compared to 39 mentions of “deceptive” or “deception.”
“While not conclusive, the disparity informs the Court that the focus of the Complaint is more on emissions than on deception,” Corr wrote.
Corr said the lawsuit is “so intertwined with emissions” that it dealt with the federal Clean Air Act and was outside of state court jurisdiction.
The judge also criticized how the county filed the lawsuit. He said the county commissioners may have violated state transparency rules.
“However… we are concerned about the manner in which the Commissioners went about hiring counsel and filing this lawsuit,” Corr said. “We believe the conduct of the Commissioners violated the spirit of the Sunshine Act.”
“That is troubling to this Court,” he added, mentioning how no commissioner addressed the lawsuit at the public meeting where it was approved.
Corey Riday-White of the Center for Climate Integrity criticized the ruling, calling it “flawed.” He said the county should appeal the ruling.
“Big Oil companies have lied about their dangerous products for decades, and many other courts across the country, including two state supreme courts, have agreed that federal law does not block communities from seeking to recover damages for this deception,” Riday-White said.
Ultimately, Corr acknowledged the county may have legitimate concerns about these oil companies, even if state court isn’t the right place to address those concerns.
“Understandably, ” Corr wrote, “the Bucks County Commissioners are concerned about climate change in general, and the negative effects climate change is having, and will have in the future, on Bucks County and its citizens, both physically and financially.”
