• Here’s what happened: 20 Republican attorneys general filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to rule whether state court is the appropriate venue for Hawaii’s climate nuisance case and the dozens of other similar cases that have been filed in state courts around the country.
  • Texas joined the brief filed by the Alabama Attorney General’s Office on behalf of 19 other states.
• Dig deeper: The attorneys general argue these cases pose a threat to state sovereignty and national energy security because they circumvent federal law and put one state in charge of imposing its energy policies on the entire country.
• Why it matters: The AGs are asking SCOTUS to establish the rules of the road for these public nuisance lawsuits moving forward. Public nuisance lawsuits have become the new fix-all tactic to get around the legislative process and potentially pad the coffers of government entities (and plaintiff’s lawyers) in the process. In the absence of legislation clearly defining what is and isn’t a public nuisance, these lawsuits have spread unchecked around the country.
• Who else? The brief points out that “the theory used against energy companies can be expanded to allow targeting of any cross-border activity that purportedly ‘exacerbate[s] the impacts of climate change,’” citing a recent nuisance lawsuit by the state of New York against a beef producer for its alleged contributions to climate change.
• Sound familiar? TLR has long argued that issues of national importance, like climate policy, require a thorough legislative solution at the federal level—not a patchwork of state lawsuits. Read TLR’s 2018 op-ed here
• What about Texas? With applications across all industries and the ability to devastate thousands of Texas jobs, TLR is particularly interested in reining in the misuse of the public nuisance doctrine as a catch-all cause of action. While the effort to pass legislation to end abusive public nuisance lawsuits was unsuccessful in 2023, we expect to renew this reform effort in 2025. Find out more in the TLR Advocate
• TLR Thoughts: The legal system has been weaponized for a full-scale attack on the energy industry, a critical player in America’s economy. But no industry is safe. SCOTUS’ decision in this case could limit the cross-border effect of these lawsuits, but it cannot eliminate the need for action on this topic by the Texas Legislature.
  

Read the full article here.