The Justice Department's Next Climate Test

A congressional referral and a Supreme Court request offer the Justice Department a two-fold chance to hold Big Oil accountable for its lies.

BY HANNAH STORY BROWN JULY 3, 2024

President Biden’s Justice Department has been offered two opportunities to act on holding oil and gas companies responsible for their deceit. It can protect state efforts to pursue accountability, and it can join them.

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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Jamie Raskin’s (D-MD) referral urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to launch an investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s violations of federal consumer protection and fraud laws. With dozens of city, state, and tribal governments already pursuing such cases under state laws, the DOJ, by not undertaking a parallel suit, remains the elusive dog that didn’t bark in this wave of lawsuits seeking to make polluters pay.

At the same time, the federal government has also been given a brief window in which it can influence the future of those state-level cases. On June 10, the Supreme Court asked the DOJ to offer the opinion of the United States on whether it should take up an industry petition. Sunoco, Shell, and several other fossil fuel companies have asked the Supreme Court to review the Hawaii Supreme Court’s decision to move forward with Honolulu’s lawsuit against the polluters.
https://prospect.org/justice/2024-07-03-garland-justice-department-hawaii-climate-lawsuit/