Clarence Thomas is in the hot seat for Supreme Court’s biggest climate case in years

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As one of the Supreme Court’s most stalwart conservative and prolific justices, Clarence Thomas’ views on the biggest cases of the day — from guns to race to religion — are rarely in doubt.

Yet when it comes to perhaps the most significant climate change-related case to reach the high court in nearly two decades, environmentalists aren’t yet writing Thomas off, even though he has consistently sided against them.

That’s because Thomas has in recent years staked out positions that align with a Colorado city that is suing Exxon and a Canadian energy company Suncor for damages caused by climate change. The longest-serving current justice has long been skeptical of letting federal law trump state law in other areas, particularly when Congress has not clearly stated its intention to do so.

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Lawyers fighting Exxon quoted Thomas and his conservative colleague, Justice Neil Gorsuch, six times in written arguments filed with the justices over the summer. And a series of experts have filed friend-of-the-court briefs debating how Thomas will square the climate case with an opinion he wrote just five months ago rejecting the idea that federal interests could block a lawsuit filed under state law by an Army specialist severely injured in Afghanistan.

“The justices to watch here are very much Justice Gorsuch and Justice Thomas,” Deepak Gupta, an appellate attorney, said at a recent event hosted by the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown Law Center. “I think they will find the lack of any textual hook for these arguments troubling.”

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday in the case, Suncor Energy v. Boulder, which raises enormous questions about whether big oil can be held accountable by states and cities for planet-warming pollution. Because dozens of other local governments have filed similar suits against energy companies, the court’s decision could have long-term sweeping implications for the oil and gas industry.

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Thomas, a former lawyer for the agrochemical industry who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, has in recent years opposed federal environmental regulation of wetlands , balked at government efforts to reduce power plant emissions and signed onto a Supreme Court decision that allowed San Francisco to pump more sewage into the Pacific Ocean . But the climate dispute turns on questions about whether state or federal law controls. And on that question, both Thomas and Gorsuch have often been skeptical of letting the feds take charge.

Environmentalists argue that if Thomas embraces a consistent approach, Boulder should win.

“Justices Thomas and Gorsuch have both written opinions that firmly reject the idea that federal law can shove state law out of the way based on hazy arguments about a law’s intentions or policy consequences,” said Kirti Datla, director of strategic legal advocacy at Earthjustice, an environmental group that submitted a brief in the case opposing Suncor and Exxon. “That’s what Suncor’s arguments boil down to in this case, so they should reject this move again here.”

President Donald Trump’s administration is siding with the oil companies in the dispute.

The Supreme Court agreed in February to decide the climate dispute after fossil fuel producers appealed a decision from Colorado’s highest court. The city and county seek billions of dollars in damages for fires and floods they say were caused by rising temperatures. Boulder alleges the oil companies not only contributed to those disasters but misled the public about their role in climate change.

“This litigation is not an attempt to solve climate change; it merely asks that petitioners bear their fair share of local costs incurred in part because of their tortious conduct,” Boulder told the justices.

Exxon and Suncor counter that regulating climate pollution is inherently a federal issue in part because emissions can waft across state lines. They say that intrinsic understanding preempts — or supersedes — state law. And, they argue, allowing every city in the nation to sue oil companies for damages because of climate change would lead to a chaotic patchwork of approaches to greenhouse gas emissions meant to punish companies.

“The intended effect of these lawsuits is to impose an enormous ‘carbon tax,’ in the form of billions of dollars of damages, that could ‘bankrupt’ the energy industry,” the companies allege.

Boulder counters that neither the Constitution nor the federal law make clear that federal interests should preempt state tort claims. And for a conservative Supreme Court that regularly looks to the specific words in a statute or the Constitution to decide cases, that has often been a persuasive argument in other contexts.

It is also a point that Thomas and Gorsuch have frequently made.

Every position staked out at the oral arguments Monday will be watched especially closely because Justice Samuel Alito recused himself from the case, creating the possibility of a 4-4 split. Alito told Bloomberg News in an interview that he felt it was “prudent” to recuse, given his holdings in energy stocks, but not required. The companies Alito holds are not named parties in the dispute.

An even split, a rare outcome , would uphold the decision by Colorado’s Supreme Court that allowed Boulder’s lawsuit to proceed without setting a precedent.

The justices could also find a more limited way to resolve the case by deciding that it isn’t yet fully baked for Supreme Court review. That outcome would send the case back to state courts — likely with a return ticket to the Supreme Court within a few years.

Thomas wrestled with similar themes in an unrelated decision in April.

In that under-the-radar decision, the court sided with an Army specialist who was severely injured by a suicide bomber on Bagram Air Base and was attempting to sue a military contractor for failing to supervise the Afghan employee who carried out the attack. The contractor argued that the state tort claim was preempted by the idea that running a war is an inherently federal endeavor.

Just like in the climate case, the contractor – and the dissenting justices – warned against allowing individual states to “regulate” that federal conduct.

Writing for a 6-3 majority , Thomas shut down that argument.

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“There is no federal preemption in vacuo, without a constitutional text or a federal statute to assert it,” the conservative justice wrote, quoting earlier opinions and pressing the Latin term for “in a vacuum” into service. The contractor, Thomas wrote, “has not identified any provision of law expressly preempting” the suit from the soldier, Winston Hencely.

Boulder cites the case four times in its latest brief, including in the second paragraph.

Another cornerstone majority opinion in the case — written by Gorsuch and joined by Thomas — dealt with Virginia’s ban on mining uranium . Minerals companies argued the ban was preempted by the federal Atomic Energy Act, but the Supreme Court rejected that pitch in a 2019 decision.

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“Invoking some brooding federal interest or appealing to a judicial policy preference should never be enough to win preemption of a state law,” Gorsuch wrote. “A litigant must point specifically to ‘a constitutional text or a federal statute’ that does the displacing or conflicts with state law.”

John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told CNN that the views expressed by Thomas and Gorsuch are “standard preemption doctrine,” because they speak to the idea that for federal law to win out it must be rooted in something .

“The question is how to divine whether the Framers or Congress wanted that preemption to be used over an issue area or in a specific case,” said Yoo, a former Thomas clerk who co-authored a brief in the case supporting Exxon’s position. One of those areas, he noted, has traditionally been understood to include foreign policy and national security.

“If they support Suncor over Boulder, I expect it would be both because they believe Congress, in the Clean Air Act, did not want states interfering with national-level pollution – such as greenhouse gases – and because of the significant effects of regulation of the energy industry on our national security and foreign policy,” Yoo said.

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作为最高法院最坚定的保守派和最多产的大法官之一，克拉伦斯·托马斯对当今最重大案件（从枪支到种族再到宗教）的看法很少受到质疑。

然而，对于近二十年来最高法院审理的或许是与气候变化相关的最重大的案件，尽管托马斯一直站在环保主义者的对立面，但环保主义者们还没有完全放弃他。

这是因为近年来，托马斯大法官的立场与科罗拉多州一家起诉埃克森美孚和加拿大能源公司森科能源公司（Suncor）造成气候变化损害的城市立场一致。这位在任时间最长的现任大法官长期以来一直对联邦法律在其他领域凌驾于州法律之上持怀疑态度，尤其是在国会尚未明确表示有意这样做的情况下。

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阿利托回避了一起最高法院重大气候变化案件

在夏季提交给最高法院的书面论证中，与埃克森美孚公司对簿公堂的律师们六次引用了托马斯大法官及其保守派同事尼尔·戈萨奇大法官的言论。此外，一系列专家也提交了法庭之友意见陈述，探讨托马斯大法官将如何调和气候案件与他五个月前撰写的一份意见书之间的矛盾。该意见书驳斥了联邦利益可以阻止一名在阿富汗严重受伤的陆军专家根据州法律提起的诉讼的观点。

“这里最值得关注的大法官是戈萨奇大法官和托马斯大法官，”上诉律师迪帕克·古普塔在乔治城大学法学院最高法院研究所最近举办的一次活动上说。“我认为他们会对这些论点缺乏任何文本依据感到担忧。”

最高法院将于周一审理“森科能源诉博尔德市”一案，该案引发了关于大型石油公司是否应因造成全球变暖的污染而受到各州和城市追究责任的重大问题。由于数十个其他地方政府已对能源公司提起类似诉讼，最高法院的裁决可能对石油和天然气行业产生深远的长期影响。

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托马斯曾是农化行业的律师，1991年由老布什总统提名。近年来，他反对联邦政府对湿地进行环境监管，对政府减少发电厂排放的努力持反对态度，并签署了一项最高法院裁决，允许旧金山向太平洋排放更多污水。但气候争议的关键在于，究竟是州法律还是联邦法律起主导作用。在这个问题上，托马斯和戈萨奇都常常对联邦政府主导气候事务持怀疑态度。

环保人士认为，如果托马斯采取一致的做法，博尔德应该会获胜。

“托马斯大法官和戈萨奇大法官都曾撰写意见书，坚决反对联邦法律可以基于对法律意图或政策后果的模糊论证而凌驾于州法律之上，”地球正义组织（Earthjustice）战略法律倡导主任基尔蒂·达特拉（Kirti Datla）表示。地球正义组织是一家环保组织，曾提交法律意见书反对森科能源公司（Suncor）和埃克森美孚公司（Exxon）。“森科能源公司在本案中的论点归根结底就是如此，因此他们应该再次驳回这一动议。”

在这次争端中，唐纳德·特朗普总统的政府站在了石油公司一边。

今年2月，最高法院同意审理这起气候纠纷。此前，化石燃料生产商对科罗拉多州最高法院的裁决提出上诉。博尔德市和县政府寻求数十亿美元的赔偿，理由是气温上升导致了火灾和洪水。博尔德市指控石油公司不仅加剧了这些灾难，还就其在气候变化中所扮演的角色误导了公众。

“这项诉讼并非旨在解决气候变化问题；它只是要求请愿者承担因其侵权行为而产生的当地成本中应有的份额，”博尔德告诉法官们。

埃克森美孚和森科能源则反驳说，监管气候污染本质上是一个联邦问题，部分原因是排放物可以跨越州界。他们认为，这种内在的理解优先于——或者说凌驾于——州法律之上。而且，他们辩称，允许全国每个城市都因气候变化而起诉石油公司索赔，将会导致针对温室气体排放的惩罚措施出现混乱不堪的局面。

这些公司声称：“这些诉讼的目的是征收巨额‘碳税’，以数十亿美元的赔偿金形式征收，这可能会使能源行业‘破产’。”

博尔德反驳说，宪法和联邦法律均未明确规定联邦利益应优先于州侵权诉讼。对于一个经常依据法条或宪法具体措辞来裁决案件的保守派最高法院而言，这在其他情况下往往是一个颇具说服力的论点。

这也是托马斯和戈萨奇经常提出的观点。

周一的口头辩论中，各方立场都将备受关注，因为大法官塞缪尔·阿利托已回避此案，这可能导致4比4的僵局。阿利托在接受彭博新闻社采访时表示，鉴于他持有能源股票，他认为回避是“审慎之举”，但并非必须。阿利托持有的公司并非本案的当事方。

如果出现平局（这种情况很少见），则科罗拉多州最高法院的裁决将维持不变，该裁决允许博尔德的诉讼继续进行，而不会开创先例。

大法官们还可以选择一种更为有限的方式来解决此案，即认定此案尚未完全成熟，不宜提交最高法院审理。这样的结果会将案件发回州法院重审——但​​很可能几年后还会再次回到最高法院。

托马斯在四月份一项无关的决定中也曾考虑过类似的问题。

在那项鲜为人知的判决中，法院支持了一名在巴格拉姆空军基地被自杀式炸弹袭击者重伤的陆军专家。该专家试图起诉一家军事承包商，指控其未能有效监管实施袭击的阿富汗雇员。承包商则辩称，由于发动战争本质上属于联邦事务，因此州政府的侵权诉讼请求已被联邦法律所取代。

就像在气候案件中一样，承包商和持不同意见的法官警告说，不要允许各个州“监管”联邦行为。

托马斯以 6 比 3 的多数票驳回了这一论点。

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特朗普在最高法院赢得了一系列“紧急”诉讼。

“如果没有宪法条文或联邦法规的明确规定，联邦法律就不能凌驾于宪法之上，”这位保守派大法官写道，他引用了之前的意见，并强调了“在真空状态下”这一拉丁语词汇的含义。托马斯写道，承包商“没有指出​​任何法律条文明确规定联邦法律优先于”士兵温斯顿·亨斯利的诉讼。

博尔德在其最新简报中四次引用了该案例，包括在第二段中。

该案的另一项关键多数意见——由戈萨奇撰写，托马斯附议——涉及弗吉尼亚州禁止开采铀矿的禁令。矿业公司辩称，该禁令已被联邦《原子能法》所取代，但最高法院在2019年的一项裁决中驳回了这一论点。

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戈萨奇写道：“援引某些深思熟虑的联邦利益或诉诸司法政策偏好，绝不足以赢得对州法律的优先权。诉讼当事人必须具体指出‘宪法文本或联邦法规’，证明其取代或与州法律相冲突。”

加州大学伯克利分校法学教授约翰·尤告诉 CNN，托马斯和戈萨奇表达的观点是“标准的先占原则”，因为它们体现了这样一种想法：联邦法律要想胜出，就必须有其根基。

“问题在于如何判断制宪者或国会是希望将这种优先权用于某个特定领域还是某个具体案件，”尤说道。他曾是托马斯法官的助理，也是支持埃克森公司立场的案件简报的合著者之一。他指出，传统上人们认为这些领域包括外交政策和国家安全。

Yoo表示：“如果他们支持森科能源而不是博尔德能源，我预计原因有二：一是他们认为国会在《清洁空气法》中不希望各州干预国家层面的污染（例如温室气体）；二是能源行业的监管对我们的国家安全和外交政策有着重大影响。”