Energy costs across America are soaring, up almost 9% since 2026 began. If a landmark case before the U.S. Supreme Court goes the wrong way, those bills could surge even higher.
This month, the Supreme Court scheduled oral arguments in Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County for October 5. The lawsuit is exactly what you would expect from a political movement that has declared war on domestic energy production.
The plaintiffs want to hold Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil accountable for supposedly causing climate change. Except it won’t end here. This Supreme Court ruling will set a precedent for lower courts that are hearing more than 1,500 similar suits that blame fossil fuel producers for climate change.
These cases are nothing more than an attempt to legislate through litigation — using courtrooms to impose policy outcomes that elected legislatures reject. It’s important that the Supreme Court stay grounded when considering this case, free of personal biases and blinders. But Suncor is not likely to get a fair hearing from at least one member of the Court. Justice Elena Kagan has prejudged the issue; she has written in support of the primary claim of the plaintiffs.
Kagan is the leader of the Court’s Left wing. This, by itself, is no reason for her to recuse herself from the Suncor case. But Kagan wrote the foreword to the Federal Judicial Center’s “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Fourth Edition.” It’s the official reference volume for judges considering cases of this nature. The book contains a chapter endorsing the false premise that “weather attribution studies” show oil companies are causing climate change and should be held liable.
In other words, Kagan has already endorsed the very position that Suncor Energy is now fighting against. She has endorsed the case that the plaintiff will soon argue before her bench. This is an enormous thumb on the scales of justice.
Kagan later dismissed this clear conflict of interest, saying, “I hadn’t read the chapter in question prior to that time. Actually, I still haven’t read it.” That’s either proof of negligence — Supreme Court justices must be very careful about what they put their names to — or, more likely, it’s simply not true.
The Suncor drama began in 2018 when both Boulder County and the city of Boulder, Colorado, sued Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil, blaming the companies for everything from wildfires to droughts to poor air quality — all just because they supply fossil fuels.
Incredibly, Boulder County admitted this, stating that Suncor “supplies about 35% of the state’s gasoline and diesel fuel demand.” Suncor and ExxonMobil were supplying what people needed: a fully legal product, but one disfavored by the Left.
Fossil fuels are responsible for just under half of all the electricity production in the Rocky Mountain State and 60% of electricity nationwide. They keep our hospitals humming with life-saving machines, our heat running on cold winter days, and air conditioning blowing in the summer. They keep the lights on at our schools and offices; they power the trucks that transport our goods and the cars we drive to work.
Not only that, the oil and gas sector employs millions of people across America, including tens of thousands in Colorado, the fourth-largest oil-producing state with ample natural gas reserves. Clean and abundant natural gas, in particular, has sparked an economic boom while reducing emissions and shrinking America’s carbon footprint.
No sane person believes the vast complexities of climate variation can be traced to a single company, let alone assigned a monetary value. No one should believe that fining Suncor will affect the global climate when China is by far the biggest polluter on earth. And no environmentalist should want to strangle the single most effective clean energy source in American history, natural gas.
Yet this is what Boulder is trying to do. Their lawsuit, if successful, will do nothing to fight climate change. But it will drive up Americans’ energy bills at a time of sharp inflation.
In October, the judges in all those 1,500+ climate liability lawsuits across the country, most of which are bankrolled by left-wing billionaires, will be paying close attention as the Supreme Court hears arguments in Suncor. This case matters — a lot. It’s time for Justice Kagan, with her clear conflict of interest, to bow out.
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Bart Marcois is the former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs.
