Exxon Mobil and Suncor are asking the Supreme Court to toss Boulder’s climate lawsuit, a case 26 states say belongs in Congress and could drive higher gas prices.
The City of Boulder and Boulder County sued Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy in 2018 under Colorado public nuisance law, seeking money damages they tie to climate-related costs. The companies want the U.S. Supreme Court to end the case, and the dispute is being argued Monday in Washington.
ABC News reported that Boulder’s court papers accuse the firms of having “knowingly caused and contributed” to climate change by promoting fossil fuels “while concealing and/or misrepresenting the dangers,” including forest damage from mountain pine beetles. Exxon and Suncor call that a “dubious theory” and say local harms from a global climate pattern cannot be pinned on individual companies.
West Virginia and 25 other states are backing the oil producers. Boulder city and county officials declined interview requests about the case, as did Exxon and Suncor.
Michael Williams, solicitor general of West Virginia, told ABC’s Devin Dwyer that national questions of who pays, and under what standards, belong in Congress.
"National issues should be decided at the national stage, and that means Congress needs to be the one to decide what are the rules for who pays, who ultimately pays, what are standards for imposing those costs,"
Williams went further on the stakes if suits like Boulder’s proceed.
"If these suits go forward, higher gas prices are maybe the smallest consequence. I think it's even bigger than that and you're going to see some of these industries potentially shutter entirely,"
That is the core fight before the justices. Local governments want state nuisance law, a claim that conduct unreasonably interferes with public rights, used to extract damages from energy producers. The companies and a bloc of states say that path turns every city into a climate regulator and bypasses the branch of government that writes national energy rules.
In court documents, Boulder and Boulder County say they have spent millions on road repairs, storm drainage improvements, and utility upgrades they link to environmental threats amplified by climate change. The complaint also points to forest “devastation” from an “epidemic” of mountain pine beetles as part of the alleged harm.
Suncor, a Canadian company, bought the Commerce City, Colorado, refinery in 2005. That facility is described as the state’s largest processor of gasoline and jet fuel, a concrete reminder that the defendants are not abstract targets. They supply fuel Coloradans use every day.
John Tayer, CEO of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, described climate-related costs as a growing budget pressure for the city.
"It's become a significant element of the city's budget,"
Tayer listed heat-driven air conditioning costs and slower outdoor work from heat exposure as examples he said cut “across the board.” Those are local budget complaints. Whether a jury or a judge can lawfully shift them onto two companies for a global climate system is the legal question the Supreme Court is being asked to stop at the threshold.
Colorado officials describe a large mountain pine beetle outbreak across the state’s mountain forests near the Front Range. Officials say more than 700,000 acres in Colorado are affected. Bark beetles killed more than 54 million acres of pines across the West in the early 2000s, an area compared to the size of Utah.
The beetles are described as roughly the size of a grain of rice. Once they attack a tree, death often follows. Sarah Hart, a forest ecologist at Colorado State University, put it plainly.
"Once a tree has been attacked, it's likely to die,"
Hart also said large-landscape control options are weak: “For managing large landscapes, we really don't have particularly effective strategies to stop it.” Dan West, an entomologist with the Colorado State Forest Service, tied stressed trees to dry weather and heat.
"We've had this dearth of precipitation, above-average temperatures -- It's kind of like attacking the bank when there's no security guard,"
West added: “These trees are standing there with not a lot of defenses.” Dan Gibbs, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources and a veteran wildland firefighter, said clearing beetle-killed trees costs state taxpayers about $10,000 per acre. State crews have been working to remove dead timber near homes to cut fire fuel.
Gibbs warned about fire behavior in killed stands and broader fallout.
"We've seen a lot of sporadic wildfire activity when you have a lot of dead trees like this,"
He said beetle-kill timber “burns differently than I would say a green, alive forest,” and that fire hazard, recreation, and watershed effects create “a huge ripple effect on almost daily life of Coloradans and visitors.” Officials say the outbreak could last years to decades.
None of that acreage, cost, or fire risk is stated in the reporting as a courtroom finding that Exxon or Suncor legally caused it. Boulder alleges a link. The companies reject the theory that global climate harms can be assigned to them through a local nuisance case. That dispute is why the Supreme Court matter matters far beyond Boulder County.
Paul Chinowsky, a longtime Boulder resident and civil engineer who focuses on climate impacts, lost his home in the 2021 Marshall Fire. He said he does not want oil companies bankrupted, but he wants them to help pay for harms he attributes to climate change. He also stated a basic energy fact of modern life.
"Let's be real. We can't live today without some level of fossil fuels, but we need regulation,"
Chinowsky described faster wear on streets and drainage as costs people mistake for ordinary maintenance. Hart argued for “greater accountability” for negative effects and said those hit hardest by climate impacts are often not the ones benefiting from the activities blamed for causing them. Those are policy opinions. They are not a substitute for a national statute that assigns liability with clear rules.
Boulder’s suit treats state nuisance law as the vehicle for that accountability. Williams and the 26-state group treat it as an end-run around Congress. Exxon and Suncor ask the justices to toss the case before local courts turn global climate into a patchwork of municipal damages trials.
The reporting does not list the full roster of the 25 states joined with West Virginia, the precise damages total Boulder seeks, the lower-court path, or the Supreme Court’s formal question presented. What it does establish is simple enough: a 2018 local lawsuit, a Monday argument in Washington, two major fuel producers asking for dismissal, and a large state coalition warning that allowing these cases invites higher prices and industry shutdown risk.
Energy policy for a continental economy is supposed to be written by elected lawmakers who answer to voters, not by city lawyers using nuisance claims to re-route the costs of weather, forests, and infrastructure onto the companies that still keep the lights on and the tanks full.
