Climate Lawfare Rings In Monday’s Supreme Court Session

When the U.S. Supreme Court gavels in for its 2026-27 term on Monday, it will hear oral arguments in one of the key energy cases in recent years. It is no exaggeration to say that the Court’s ultimate ruling in the case styled Suncor Energy v. Boulder County could determine the success or failure of the American Energy Dominance agenda being pursued by President Donald Trump. 

In a guest piece for the Wall Street Journal, former attorney general William Barr asserts that Boulder County should not be allowed to write American energy policy from a Colorado courtroom. Speaking to an audience in Texas this week, Barr said Boulder County’s case claims “interstate emissions have always been subject to regulation by the state. That’s not true.” He isn’t wrong.

Barr went on to add that “if Colorado doesn’t like what ExxonMobil is doing … they cannot sue ExxonMobil under their law for activities in Texas. That’s basic … and the plaintiffs’ theory ignores it.” There is no doubt the plaintiffs’ theory does ignore this basic facet of federal law — that the federal government has always held primacy when it comes to regulating air pollution under the Clean Air Act. That longstanding legal principle has led to a long series of similar cases brought by different plaintiffs using the same left-wing law firms being thrown out of courts all over the country over the last half decade. 

This Boulder case is not even the latest in this blatant lawfare campaign which is designed less to win judgments than to extract pounds of flesh from the industry defendants via tens of millions of dollars wasted on litigation costs. Middlesex County in New Jersey agreed to be the figurehead for another case