Maryland high court rejects municipal climate change damages suit News
Quintin Soloviev, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Maryland high court rejects municipal climate change damages suit

Maryland’s highest court on Tuesday dismissed several local government claims to recover damages against several large energy companies for harm created by climate change, finding that federal law preempts the case and state law does not support it.

The case dates to 2018, when the city of Baltimore filed a lawsuit against the energy companies, alleging that their decades-long activities contributed to climate-related damages to the city. Anne Arundel County and Annapolis filed similar lawsuits. After a number of procedural disputes over several years, in part over jurisdiction and venue, the case arrived in the Maryland state courts and consolidated on appeal.

Plaintiffs alleged that the companies contributed to climate change through the production and promotion of fossil fuels, asserting state law claims including public nuisance, trespass, and failure to warn.

In a consolidated decision, Maryland’s Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of the suits against the energy companies.

The court determined that state claims were displaced by federal jurisdiction regarding interstate pollution, and further preempted by federal legislation, including the Clean Air Act. According to the court, allowing state tort actions to go forward would interfere with a comprehensive federal regulatory scheme regarding greenhouse gases.

The court also found that even if these claims were not preempted, they were not likely to succeed. The court emphasized the difficulty in proving causation between localized effects and large-scale activity, and concerns regarding the timing of the injuries.

The decision is a substantial roadblock for state and local governments looking to recover costs related to climate change. It is one more entry in a growing line of case law that limits state court ability to address global emissions.

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