Supreme Court says Minnesota’s lawsuit against major actors in the fossil-fuel industry may proceed 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the State of Minnesota’s lawsuit against major parties in the fossil-fuel industry may proceed in state court. Without comment, the Court denied the petition of the defendants ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and three Koch Industries entities to review lower-court decisions that remanded the case to state court.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison first sued defendants in June 2020, alleging defendants deceived and defrauded Minnesotans about the climate change-related danger associated with their products. Now, three and a half years after Minnesota first sued the defendants, the case can proceed in state court, where it was originally filed.
In a response to the ruling Attorney General Ellison said “I appreciate the Court’s consideration and decision. It aligns with 25 federal court decisions across the country, all of which have found that cases like ours rest on these defendants’ failures to warn and their campaigns of deception around their products’ contributions to the climate crisis.”