Boulder’s nearly eight-year effort to recover damages from ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy for their alleged role in climate disasters is heading to the Supreme Court.
On Monday, the Court agreed to hear the oil giants’ challenge to Boulder’s 2018 climate lawsuit, which argues that the companies should help pay for the escalating costs of wildfires, floods and other disasters exacerbated by climate change.
The suit alleges that Suncor and Exxon deliberately misled the public about the effects of climate change to make enormous profits, and should now use some of that money to help Boulder recover from and prepare for the impacts of global warming.
“Boulder is already experiencing the effects of a rapidly warming climate, and the financial burden of adaptation should not fall solely on local taxpayers,” said City of Boulder Climate Initiatives Director Jonathan Koehn in a statement.
Local governments have filed dozens of similar “climate accountability” lawsuits that seek damages from fossil fuel companies. All of them could potentially be impacted by a Supreme Court ruling that narrows or even eliminates the ability to bring those cases.
“We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will not hamstring our right under Colorado law to seek the resources needed to build a safer, more resilient future,” Koehn added.
Trade groups and oil companies told CPR News that damages from climate change should be decided by the federal government, and not litigated in state court.
“As our filings make clear, climate policy shouldn’t be set through fragmented state‑court actions, and we look forward to making that case before the Court,” said Curtis Smith, ExxonMobil’s global head of media, in an email.
The Court is expected to hear the case sometime in the fall, while a decision could come later this year or into 2027.
Eight years and counting
For years, Exxon and Suncor have asserted that Boulder’s arguments should only be heard in federal court, and not be determined by state law. That’s because the federal government has historically played a major role in regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
Those efforts, though, have largely failed. Two federal courts denied the company’s attempts to move the case, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case in 2023.
In May 2025, a 5-2 majority of the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Boulder’s claims could continue on in state court.
In August, the oil companies asked the nation’s high court to review that decision, and put an end to state-level lawsuits that seek potentially billions of dollars in damages.
Monday’s announcement means the Supreme Court will review the Colorado State Supreme Court decision, and debate two questions. The first is whether it’s too early for the case to be reviewed, since Boulder’s lawsuit hasn’t even made it to trial, according to Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.
If the Supreme Court decides it’s too early, it could “dodge the issue” and potentially take up the case after it were to go to trial, Gerrard said. But if the Court decides it can hear the case, the second question is much more momentous: whether cases alleging fossil fuel companies are liable for the effects of climate change can even be brought in the first place.
“It’s potentially very significant because it could lead to a definitive ruling from the Supreme Court on whether the fossil fuel companies might be liable,” Gerrard said.
A broad ruling could cut off these types of lawsuits entirely. The Court may also decide that only a law passed by Congress could order the companies to pay damages. Either way, the odds are not in Boulder’s favor.
“When the Supreme Court takes a case, it usually reverses it,” Gerrard said. “So the statistical odds are that the Colorado Supreme Court decision would be reversed.”
“But those are merely odds — it's not a certainty,” he added.
One wrinkle to the case is the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent decision to revoke a key scientific finding that greenhouse gas emissions harm human health. Gerrard said that fossil fuel companies have argued that because the EPA regulates greenhouse gas pollution, the matter belongs in federal court.
But terminating the so-called “endangerment finding” means that states could make the case that they are now the main regulators of climate pollution, not the Trump administration. That could open the door for climate accountability lawsuits to keep moving ahead under state laws.
“There’s definitely going to be a legal fight about that question,” he said.
