SCOTUS’s Suncor Case Is ‘Bigger’ Than A ‘Climate’ Policy Dispute

The U.S. Supreme Court will kick off its 2026 term next week with what will be one of its biggest cases of the year. And according to several legal specialists, there’s much more to the dispute than meets the eye.

The case in question is Suncor v. Boulder, which deals with the lawfare that Boulder, Colorado, launched against Suncor Energy companies and the Exxon Mobil Corporation. The city is seeking monetary damages based on claims that the oil giants’ activities are contributing to “climate change” and that such activities are harming Boulder residents.

Before SCOTUS is the question of whether federal law prevents state-law claims “seeking relief for injuries allegedly caused by the effects of interstate and international greenhouse-gas emissions on the global climate.” The justices will also consider whether they have jurisdiction to hear the case.

During a Tuesday virtual press conference, Alliance for Consumers Executive Director O.H. Skinner said that Democrats and their allies are attempting to make the suit out to be nothing more than a “basic tort case” that is “trying to hold people accountable for their actions.” In reality, however, he noted that the lawsuit is effectively “a Swiss Army knife for them to accomplish social change through a court system.”

“It’s actually bigger than ‘climate change,’” Skinner said. “It’s about [Democrats’] overall ability to weaponize courts to accomplish policy goals that are sweeping and that are multibillion-dollar in scale, and they could end up with an order that basically rewrites the American economy [if they prevail].”

Should the Supreme Court endorse Boulder’s position that states and localities can pursue these types of state-based claims against Suncor and Exxon, the AFC executive director said, such a ruling would open up Pandora’s box for leftists to advance similar lawfare against other industries they disfavor. He specifically noted that standard could apply “across all sorts of different social questions, all the way down to guns.”

“If this is allowed to proceed in the name of climate change, countless other things that are ills that the left has identified will become solvable via a local lawsuit by a crazy college town in a blue state, and all of a sudden, that will become the ticket to ride for the left in terms of fixing the ills that they see in the world,” Skinner said. “It’s not a fight about climate science. … It’s a fight about whether we’re going to allow this maneuver to be what reshapes American society, and that’s why I think everybody should care, irrespective of their views on climate change or their views on how to fix this problem or that problem.”

Also in attendance at Tuesday’s presser was former Alaska Acting Attorney General Stephen Cox.

Cox detailed how Democrats and their allies have taken up state litigation against fossil fuel companies (like in the Suncor case) as a means of sidestepping the legislative process by advancing their agenda through the courts instead of at the ballot box. He further surmised that, should Boulder prevail, it would effectively allow states and localities to dictate the energy policy of other states and localities.

“I see this as federalism turning over on its head because … when it’s the feds overreaching with the [the states] … we can work with our constituents, and elections have consequences, and we see the accountability play out, and that’s how you deal with that,” Cox said. “But with the [state] courts, [it’s different]. If you’re in Alaska … we take a snapshot in the spring and the fall in Alaska of the price of oil to set our state budget because of the amount of royalties and taxes that we receive based on it. We are an oil state. We depend on oil. But if we’ve got … national energy policy being set in state courts outside of our state, where’s the democratic accountability in that?”

[READ: The Federalist’s Guide To The 2026 Supreme Court Term]

One factor looming over next week’s oral arguments is the late-breaking announcement that Justice Samuel Alito has recused himself from the case. The move came months after leftist groups waged a pressure campaign against the Bush appointee to withdraw from Suncor due to his financial stakes in the fossil fuel sector. As The Federalist previously reported, however, Alito does not hold any interests in the companies participating in Suncor.

While noting that it’s never “good” or “easy” for the Supreme Court to hear cases without “their full complement,” Skinner said that “it is not something” that he thinks “will be dispositive of the case, and it’s not something that [he] think[s] is noteworthy, other than that [Alito] made that decision based on his own considerations.” He also expressed confidence that there are at least five justices “who do not think that courts can do cross-border stuff like this,” even with Alito’s recusal.

Alito is hardly the only justice to face calls to refrain from participating in Suncor.

Conservative organizations have also pressured Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself from the case due to a foreword she authored for a contested manual used to advise federal judges. As The Federalist previously reported, the manual produced by the Federal Judicial Center and National Academies of Sciences contained a now-retracted “climate science” guide littered with references to left-wing climate activists. Kagan told Congress in July that while she had “become aware” of the scandal over the manual, she “hadn’t read” the contested chapter prior to authoring the foreword and “still” had not read it at that time.

In terms of the case’s outcome, Skinner predicted that a favorable ruling for Suncor and Exxon would likely “kick the legs out” from underneath Democrats’ “public nuisance” lawfare strategy. While these left-wing actors will undoubtedly “come up with ‘climate homicide’ or some other workaround effort,” he said, “each of those efforts is more tenuous than this one.”

A favorable ruling from the justices “would … conclusively end this type of attack by the left and state courts to reshape our energy industry and our nation,” he added.

The Supreme Court will hold oral arguments in Suncor v. Boulder on Monday at 10 a.m. ET.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood