Less than an hour after the first warning that a wildfire was racing toward her suburban street, Tawnya Somauroo’s home in Louisville, Colorado, was gone. Nearly five years later, she’s still rebuilding. On Monday, the first day of its new term, the Supreme Court took up a case that could decide whether people like her can look to the oil and gas industry for help paying the bill.
The case comes from the city and county of Boulder, Colorado. Its outcome could shape similar lawsuits across the country, with billions of dollars at stake in a wave of climate litigation in the United States and around the world.
Who Pays for the Damage
Somauroo has spent close to five years rebuilding her house and helping prepare her neighborhood to withstand another blaze. Climate change contributes to more frequent wildfires, and she worries that careful landscaping, metal fencing and flame-resistant siding won’t be enough. “We lost our homes and they left us to figure out for ourselves how to make our neighborhoods safe again,” Somauroo said. “At the end of the day, it comes out of our pockets, you know? And it does feel like maybe the oil and gas industry should have a part in this.”
Boulder County is one of dozens of jurisdictions across the United States suing oil and gas companies for help paying for damage from disasters linked to climate change. The city and county sued Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil in 2018, before the fire that destroyed Somauroo’s home. They alleged the companies violated state law by deceiving the public about their contributions to climate change. They’re seeking unspecified damages to help cover the costs of worsening disasters.
Climate change played a part in the 2021 Marshall Fire, which destroyed Somauroo’s home. The fire caused an estimated $2 billion in damage, making it the costliest wildfire in Colorado history.
Industry and Administration Push Back
The companies argue that state-court lawsuits aren’t the way to address a global issue. Phil Goldberg, special counsel for the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, an industry group, said, “The problem is that climate change is caused by pretty much everybody living on earth. We need to figure out how to address that. We need to address it in a very meaningful way. This litigation doesn’t do that.”
The Trump administration supports the companies. Federal government attorneys say the lawsuits are a backdoor effort to regulate heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions and amount to an unconstitutional power grab. They wrote, “No one state can superimpose its own regulatory preferences on the rest — least of all to address a global problem that exists almost entirely outside its borders and affects the world at large.”
The administration argues that the Clean Air Act gives the federal government, not states, authority to regulate emissions. But the Republican administration has largely used that authority to roll back environmental regulations. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency repealed rules limiting planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from coal- and natural-gas-fueled power plants. That move could complicate the government’s argument.
Local Costs, Local Courts
Boulder says it isn’t trying to regulate emissions beyond its borders. It wants companies to pay local costs. Sam Sankar, senior vice president at Earthjustice, which filed an amicus brief, put it plainly: “Boulder County and city aren’t trying to change what’s happening in Texas or New York, they’re trying to get compensation for things happening now in Colorado.”
Chris Winter, executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center, an environmental research group in Colorado, said, “Local county municipal governments play a very important role in helping front line communities adapt to climate change. This case could very well set a precedent.”
A Conservative Court, an Open Question
The case is before a Supreme Court with a conservative majority. Environmental regulations haven’t always fared well there, including in a 2022 decision limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
Only eight of the nine justices were to hear the case. Justice Samuel Alito recused himself a week before arguments after calls for him to step aside because he owns stock in oil companies. That raised the possibility of a tie vote, though no one knew how likely it was. The court was also considering whether it had jurisdiction to hear the case at this stage, a question experts described as a potential “off-ramp.”
Why This Matters: Boulder's case asks a basic question about accountability: when a disaster is linked to climate change, who covers the cost? Right now, as Somauroo’s account makes clear, homeowners who lost everything often pay. The federal government argues that Congress and federal regulators, not states, should handle emissions, yet the same administration has been repealing power-plant emission limits. Communities are caught between a regulatory system that’s retreating and a legal route that may be closed. If the justices side with the companies, or sidestep the case through the jurisdiction question, dozens of similar lawsuits could stall while bills keep landing on local governments and residents. If Boulder prevails, it could set a precedent for how fossil fuel companies answer for local damage.