LOUISVILLE, Colo. (AP) — Tawnya Somauroo’s Colorado home was reduced to ash less than an hour after the first warning that wildfires would spread through her suburban streets.
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For nearly five years, she worked tirelessly to rebuild her house and help ensure her community was resilient to the next fire. But as climate change makes wildfires more frequent, she worries that careful landscaping, metal fencing and fire-resistant siding won’t be enough.
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“We lost our homes, and they left us thinking about how to make our communities safe again,” Somauru said. “Ultimately, it’s coming out of our pockets, you know? And it really feels like the oil and gas industry should be involved.”
She lives in Boulder County, one of dozens of U.S. jurisdictions suing oil and gas companies to help compensate for losses from climate change-related disasters.
The case is part of a wave of climate change litigation across the country and around the world, involving billions of dollars. On Monday, the first day of the new Supreme Court term, justices will hear the Boulder case that could determine the fate of other similar cases.
The city and county of Boulder first sued two oil companies in 2018, a few years before the fire. They argue that Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil violated state law by deceiving the public about their contributions to climate change and are seeking unspecified damages to help cover losses from the worsening disaster.
The companies say filing a flood of lawsuits in state courts is not the answer to a global problem.
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“The problem is that climate change is caused by almost everyone on the planet,” said Phil Goldberg, special adviser to the industry group’s Manufacturer Responsibility Project. “We need to figure out how to solve this problem. We need to solve this problem in a very meaningful way. This lawsuit does not do that.”
These companies have received support from the Trump administration. Federal government lawyers say the lawsuits are a backdoor way to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and amount to an unconstitutional power grab.
“No country can impose its regulatory preferences on other countries, especially to address global problems that exist almost entirely outside its borders and affect the entire world,” they wrote.
They say the Clean Air Act allows the federal government, not state governments, to regulate emissions. Republican administrations have used this power in large part to roll back environmental regulations.
Last month, the EPA relinquished some of its climate authority, repealing rules that limited coal and natural gas power plants from emitting greenhouse gases that warm the planet. The move could complicate its argument.
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Boulder said it was not trying to regulate offshore emissions, just holding companies accountable for local costs.
“Boulder County and the city are not trying to change what’s happening in Texas or New York, they just want compensation for what’s happening in Colorado,” said Sam Sankar, senior vice president of Earthjustice, which filed an amicus brief in the case.
Climate change was cited as a factor in the 2021 Marshall Fire that destroyed the Somauroo home after the county originally filed a lawsuit. Total losses are estimated at $2 billion. It was the costliest wildfire in Colorado’s history.
“Local counties and municipalities play a very important role in helping frontline communities adapt to climate change. This case may well set a precedent,” said Chris Winter, executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center, an environmental research group in Colorado.
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The case will go before the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which has not always looked down upon environmental regulations, including a 2022 ruling that limited the EPA’s power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
However, only eight of the nine justices will serve on the bench. Justice Samuel Alito recused himself a week before the arguments as he faced calls to resign over his oil company stock holdings.
That creates the possibility of a tie in the case, although it’s unclear how likely that is. The court is also weighing what experts call a potential “exit” issue: whether the judge has jurisdiction to hear the case at this stage.
Whitehurst reported from Washington.
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