[ECO]US Supreme Court Allows Hawaii Oil Company Lawsuit to Move Forward

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The Supreme Court’s decision on Hawaii oil company lawsuits opens the door for climate damage compensation claims.

Oil giants Shell and Sunoco faced a major setback on January 13, 2025, when the US Supreme Court rejected their attempts to block

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. This decision allows more than two dozen oil company lawsuits across the country to proceed toward trial.

The court’s ruling specifically affects a lawsuit filed by Honolulu, Hawaii, against several major oil and gas companies. The city claims these companies deliberately misled the public about climate change risks while contributing to problems like flooding and rising sea levels.

In Honolulu alone, climate-related damage has cost taxpayers over $100 million in the past decade. The city faces ongoing expenses to protect its coastline from erosion and upgrade infrastructure to handle increased flooding. These costs form a central part of their legal argument for compensation via oil company lawsuits.

The 2020 Honolulu lawsuit represents part of a growing global trend. Similar oil company lawsuits have emerged worldwide, with notable cases in the Netherlands, France, and Australia. In 2021, a Dutch court ordered Shell to reduce its emissions by 45% by 2030, setting a precedent for climate litigation.

According to recent environmental data, the world’s top

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. The top 20 fossil fuel companies are responsible for over one-third of all modern greenhouse gas emissions. This data strengthens the legal arguments in these cases.

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2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The oil companies tried to argue that federal law prevents states from handling cases about greenhouse gas emissions. However, Hawaii’s Supreme Court disagreed, stating that Honolulu’s case focuses on deceptive business practices rather than emissions regulation.

Justice Samuel Alito stepped away from considering these petitions. Legal experts note this likely happened because he owns stock in several oil companies.

This marks the fourth time since 2023 that the Supreme Court has declined to hear appeals from oil companies in oil company lawsuit cases. The pattern suggests a significant shift in how these cases might proceed through the legal system.

Before making their decision, the Supreme Court sought advice from the

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lawyer, the US Solicitor General. In December, this office recommended letting the cases continue in state courts without federal intervention.

The decision particularly affects Honolulu’s case, which has already begun the pre-trial discovery phase. Legal experts suggest this case could reach trial by 2026, making it one of the first to test these climate-related claims in court.

Ben Sullivan, who leads Honolulu’s Office of Climate Change, Sustainability, and Resiliency, called it “a significant day for the people of Honolulu.” He emphasized that the decision allows Hawaii to use its own laws to protect local taxpayers from climate crisis costs.

The ruling’s impact extends beyond Hawaii. Massachusetts is pursuing a similar case against ExxonMobil for consumer protection violations, and that case is also well into its discovery phase.

Legal experts and climate accountability advocates view this as a crucial development. Aaron Regunberg, director of Public Citizen’s Climate Accountability Project, connected the cases to current events, pointing to recent climate-related disasters in Los Angeles as examples of why oil company lawsuits matter.

Neither Shell nor Sunoco provided immediate comments about the court’s decision. However, an industry representative called the Supreme Court’s choice “unfortunate.”

Patrick Parenteau, a law professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, explained that if the Supreme Court had intervened, it could have delayed these cases by a year or more. Such a delay might have effectively ended all similar climate litigation across the country.

The decision opens the door for courts to examine evidence about how much oil companies knew about climate change and when they knew it. It also allows investigation into whether these companies actively worked to hide this information from the public.

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