Energy in Depth (EID) reports on climate litigation falling cases in the current year, leading up to a major SCOTUS hearing later this year.  Most recent article is Maryland’s Climate Lawsuits Quietly Hit a Dead End. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

In 2018, climate activists hailed Baltimore’s lawsuit against energy companies as “the next in a growing wave” of climate liability lawsuits. Eight years later, that wave has crashed in Maryland.

The ordinary 90-day window to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Maryland Supreme Court’s March 24 decision has passed without fanfare, leaving the dismissals of Baltimore, Annapolis, and Anne Arundel County’s climate lawsuits intact.

For the climate litigation campaign, that silence is telling. These cases were once promoted as part of coordinated legal strategy to force energy companies to pay for global climate change through local courts. Instead, Maryland’s highest court delivered one of the campaign’s clearest defeats yet – rejecting the lawsuits from top to bottom.

A Major Problem for the National Campaign

Maryland’s final defeat comes at a critical moment. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s refusal to dismiss Boulder’s climate lawsuit. When granting review, the Court also asked the parties to brief whether it has jurisdiction to review the ruling at this stage in the litigation.

The Maryland Supreme Court’s now final decision answers that question.

In the Maryland Supreme Court’s ruling, the justices were explicit about why: they wanted to give SCOTUS:

“the benefit of a high court’s analysis that is different from that expressed by our colleagues on the high courts of Colorado and Hawaii.”

This created a clear split between Maryland’s Supreme Court and state supreme courts in Colorado and Hawaii that ruled against the companies. Now, SCOTUS has clear jurisdiction to review the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling and has an opportunity to put an end to the nationwide lawfare campaign against the U.S. energy industry.

Maryland Double Whammy: Dismissed on Federal Grounds – and State Grounds Too

Writing on behalf of the 6-1 majority, Justice Brynja M. Booth delivered a clean sweep against every theory the climate litigation campaign has thrown at the courts – ruling that these claims fail under federal law, and under state law too.

The court firmly dismissed plaintiffs’ attempts to reframe their sweeping federal claims as local matters, making clear that such claims fall squarely within the domain of federal law:

“We are unpersuaded by the local governments’ myopic view of their claims or their attempt to ignore or minimize the effect that a significant damages award would have on both domestic and international attempts to regulate pollution—matters which are solely within the purview of federal law.” (Emphasis added)

The court was equally clear that local governments lack the basic jurisdictional authority to police global conduct:

“The local governments cannot escape this inescapable conclusion: they are seeking to apply Maryland law to regulate conduct that occurs outside their jurisdictional borders, as well as within the State’s borders. The local governments’ police powers do not extend beyond their respective borders, and certainly do not authorize the policing of global conduct.” (Emphasis added)

But the majority didn’t stop at federal preemption. It ruled that even if federal law didn’t preempt these claims entirely, the plaintiffs still had no case. Their nuisance, trespass, and failure-to-warn theories each failed independently under Maryland state law, leaving plaintiffs with no viable path forward in any court:

“Even if the local governments’ state law claims were not displaced or preempted by federal law, the local governments failed to state legally cognizable claims under state law for public nuisance, private nuisance, trespass, and negligent and strict liability failure to warn.”

The opinion also delivered a direct rebuke to the plaintiffs’ core liability theory: that the production and sale of oil and natural gas is a liability-inducing event:

“No single extraction decision, no single sale of fuel, and no single consumer transaction creates a foreseeable risk of harm to any identifiable person.”

That language echoes warnings from other courts. In South Carolina, a judge dismissed Charleston’s climate lawsuit by flagging the same problem: accepting plaintiffs’ theory would open the door to “boundless” liability.

Climate superfund bills–Retroactive Punishment with a Misnomer Name 

Climate superfund bills – which are designed and pushed by the same activists behind the litigation campaign against oil and gas companies – have been introduced in over ten states and signed into law in two, Vermont and New York. These state superfund laws are now facing steep legal challenges from industry groups, other state attorney generals, and the Trump administration.  

One of the sharpest concerns raised during the panel was the constitutional flaw at the core of these bills: retroactive liability. Climate superfund laws aim to penalize decades of past activity – activity that was lawful and, in many cases, encouraged by government policy. As GMU Professor Donald Kochan explained: 

“If every time you lose in court and can’t actually prove that someone is responsible… you just go to the legislature and say, ‘Hey, why don’t you deem them responsible without any proof’—that’s a really dangerous change and shift in our Democratic and Republican values.”

This approach raises due process concerns and opens the door to politicized, retroactive punishment across a range of industries, not just energy.  

Experts also pushed back on the “superfund” label, calling it a misleading analogy. The EPA’s original superfund program, also known as CERCLA, pooled funds for cleanup at specific contaminated sites. But, as Kochan pointed out, unlike hazardous waste, climate change is a global issue with no discrete damage sites or direct remediation:  

“There’s all kinds of reasons why these are not Superfunds. One is that there’s nothing remediated here… These labels were done for convenience sake, to make it sound like it wasn’t such a deviation from norms to do this kind of thing.”

Instead of remediation, the real purpose seems to be punitive: to create a system of endless liability that ultimately puts fossil fuel companies out of business.  

Consumer Costs and Chilling Investment 

Even if courts eventually strike these laws down, their economic effects will be felt immediately. C3 Solutions’ Ian Banks noted that companies are already reconsidering development plans in states that have proposed climate superfund laws, and that hesitation impacts consumers: 

“These companies are going to have to pay billions of dollars… It’s going to discourage them from continuing to take action in these states. And likely, these costs will get passed on to consumers.”

This dynamic is playing out in real-time in California. As EID Climate previously commented, California’s own climate superfund effort stalled earlier this year after lawmakers raised red flags about affordability and fairness. Still, California has seen a policy-driven exodus of energy companies and infrastructure, contributing to its high gas prices. This outcome suggests that even in deep-blue states, reality catches up to rhetoric when bills come due. 

The Role of Attribution Science 

One of the pillars supporting climate superfund legislation is a relatively new theory: source attribution science, which claims to link specific weather disasters to individual companies’ historical emissions. Kochan noted that this theory has yet to withstand courtroom scrutiny:  

“We’ve not yet gotten to the trial stage in any of these cases… because plaintiffs haven’t yet had to prove traceability, causation, and harm. But when we do, the scientific evidence standards should keep this science out.” 

Professor Weinkle, who holds a PhD in Environmental Studies and Public Policy, added that source attribution research is increasingly shaped by litigation and advocacy goals, instead of neutral science – a dynamic that undermines its credibility in policy contexts. 

The Writing Was on the Wall

Lawmakers in Maryland have long seen the signs that this climate litigation lacks legal merit. Recognizing this, they pivoted, joining New York and Vermont in pursuit of Rockefeller-funded “climate superfund” efforts that retroactively charge energy companies for the costs of climate adaptation projects.

Even those superfund efforts in Maryland have faced hurdles. Maryland’s own climate superfund bill was downgraded to a study amid bipartisan concern about the impact on energy affordability.  That pivot reveals the basic problem. If activists cannot get courts to impose sweeping climate liability through nuisance, trespass, and failure-to-warn claims, they will try to get legislatures to impose the same costs by another name.

But Maryland shows both paths face serious legal, fiscal, and affordability concerns.

Bottom Line: Despite activist promises, Maryland’s climate lawsuits have quietly joined the growing list of failed attempts to bankrupt the U.S. energy industry. The Maryland Supreme Court’s ruling also came at the perfect time, as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in Boulder’s similar climate lawsuit.