Experts Warn Climate Suits Headed To Supreme Court Could Help Adversaries, Hit Family Energy Bills

WASHINGTON — Former Attorney General Bill Barr told the Daily Caller News Foundation that climate lawsuits against American energy companies could strengthen China and Russia.

The Supreme Court will hear Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County on Oct. 5, and the case will decide whether local and state governments can sue energy producers for climate damages under state law. Sovereign immunity shields state-owned producers from those suits, so only private companies would ever pay, Barr told the DCNF in a Wednesday interview.

“Because of sovereign immunity, the suits couldn’t be brought against government-owned energy companies, and so the only companies that would end up being hurt by this are private companies,” the former attorney general said.

Russia and China own their energy companies, Barr said.

“They can go out and get oil, and get it from around the world, and sell it without paying this carbon tax, essentially. Whereas, if one of our companies is selling the oil, then these costs are passed along to the consumers,” he explained.

Asked whether that outcome is unintended, Barr said the plaintiffs know what they are doing. “I think their objective has been to destroy the American energy industry.”

Asked who gains market share if they succeed, Barr answered, “Our adversaries.”

Barr spoke earlier Wednesday morning on a panel at a National Press Club forum hosted by mtf.news, alongside Jennifer Hernandez of Holland and Knight and Phil Goldberg, special counsel to the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project. Each of the panelists said a ruling for Boulder would affect regular people’s energy bills.

Global emissions would rise if production shifted to Chinese and Russian companies, Barr told the DCNF.

Purported shifts to renewables have already pushed industry to China, where plants burn dirtier coal. “So this is all a shell game,” Barr said.

Europe has taken that path and committed “industrial suicide,” Barr told the DCNF. Energy costs there have climbed so far that European industry cannot compete, while low prices have kept the American economy comparatively strong.

Americans would feel a ruling for Boulder at the pump and on their utility bills, Barr told the DCNF. If fossil fuels become “massively expensive,” the result would be “a radical contraction of our economy, the loss of jobs, and extremely high energy costs.”

Several dozen states and municipalities have brought “an avalanche of cases” seeking hundreds of billions of dollars from American energy companies, Barr said on the panel.

Puerto Rico alone is seeking $100 billion over a single hurricane, said Barr, now a partner at Torridon Law.

The plaintiffs are asking courts to assign an individual company a share of the blame for a worldwide phenomenon, Barr said.

Three constitutional problems run through the litigation, Barr said on the panel. First, one state cannot apply its own law in a way that binds conduct in other states. Second, a state generally must apply the law of the place where the conduct occurred. Third, climate is a matter for federal foreign policy rather than for local courts.

Juries would have to weigh whether Brazilian deforestation or Chinese coal plants contributed more to global warming than the defendants did, Barr said. The country has not chosen through its elected branches to shut down the fossil fuel industry and plaintiffs are turning to the courts for a result they could not win at the ballot box.

The discovery process is part of the strategy, Barr said. Lawyers comb through a company’s documents, calls and emails, then carry what they find into the next case. The litigation “keeps a cloud over the industry,” and companies cannot allocate capital or plan energy investments under that kind of exposure.

“I think upward mobility is at stake,” Hernandez, a partner at Holland and Knight who has practiced environmental and land use law for four decades, told the DCNF in an interview after the panel. “I think the wrong decision could plunge even more families into poverty.”

Energy costs fall hardest on families who cannot absorb them, Hernandez told the DCNF.

“They’re not elastic. You can’t decide whether or not you cook. You have to cook,” she said. “If you don’t have too much money, you end up spending even more of it on basic necessities, and then you start having to make choices: medical care or cooking.”

Advocates behind the litigation understand that effect and have decided their policy goals outweigh it, Hernandez told the DCNF.

Their priorities matter more “than any given family’s circumstance any given day because the future of the earth is at stake, and I think that’s hyperbolic, and I think it vastly understates the harm and pain that they’re causing.”

The case is not about whether climate change is real, Goldberg said on the panel. Manufacturers are invested in sourcing and using energy more efficiently and in adapting to climate effects.

The concern is deciding climate policy in state courts case by case instead of through a uniform federal response, Goldberg said. The Supreme Court held in American Electric Power v. Connecticut in 2011 that federal law governs interstate emissions claims.

Boulder would have to apply the law of the place where the conduct occurred, and here that means every state and every country, Goldberg said.

Twenty-six states filed briefs arguing that Colorado cannot set rules for conduct inside their borders, Goldberg said.

California regulators found the state’s own climate plan will cost households earning less than $100,000 a year more than they save, Hernandez said on the panel, citing the California Air Resources Board’s 2022 scoping plan.

Those costs fall disproportionately on black and Latino families given the state’s demographics, said Hernandez, who also sits on the board of the Breakthrough Institute.

Boulder County, the city of Boulder and San Miguel County sued Suncor and ExxonMobil in 2018 to recover the costs of adapting to wildfires and extreme heat. The local governments allege the companies concealed the risks of their products, according to EarthRights International, which represents them.

Neither the county nor EarthRights had a representative on the panel.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 5-2 in May 2025 that federal law did not preempt the claims, according to its opinion. The justices agreed on Feb. 23 to review that decision and directed the parties to argue whether the court has jurisdiction to hear the case at all.

Supporters of the litigation outlined their arguments on a Center for Progressive Reform webinar this month. The case gives local governments forced to spend public money on climate adaptation a way to hold fossil fuel companies accountable, they told the DCNF.

Left-leaning climate groups and legal figures filed at least 20 amicus curiae briefs supporting Boulder in August.

A federal judge blocked New York’s $75 billion climate superfund law on Sept. 1, finding the Clean Air Act preempts the state’s attempt to impose liability for emissions generated outside its borders. Roughly two dozen similar climate suits are pending nationwide.

The court scheduled argument for Oct. 5 and is expected to rule by the end of its term in June 2027.