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Alito Recuses From Supreme Court Climate Liability Case Days Before Arguments
ReAlito Recuses From Supreme Court Climate Liability Case Days Before Arguments
Justice Samuel Alito withdrew from Suncor Energy v. Boulder County less than a week before oral arguments, leaving the court without its full complement as it weighs whether municipalities can sue oil companies over climate change.
Justice Samuel Alito has recused himself from a closely watched Supreme Court case over climate change liability, stepping aside less than a week before oral arguments were set to begin. Scott Harris, the clerk of the Supreme Court, notified the parties' lawyers in a letter Monday that Alito had withdrawn from Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County. No explanation was provided for the decision.
The justices had been scheduled to open the 2026-27 term by hearing arguments in the case on Monday. The dispute centers on whether Boulder, Colorado, can use state-law tort claims to sue oil and gas companies over their alleged role in contributing to climate change. The case has drawn intense scrutiny from Republicans, who argue that Colorado officials are weaponizing the court system to advance an environmental agenda that has not moved through elected legislatures.
Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, said the recusal was not made lightly but predicted it would not prove decisive. «Justice Alito does not take his duty to sit lightly,» Severino said. «We do not know why he recused himself, as the reason has not been made public, but I do not expect his recusal to ultimately change the outcome of Suncor v. Boulder.»
The recusal follows Alito's January withdrawal from Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, a Louisiana coastal erosion dispute, because he owned stock in ConocoPhillips, the parent company of one of the parties in related litigation, Burlington Resources Oil and Gas Company.
Conservative legal figures framed the broader litigation as a question about the role of courts in policymaking rather than a debate over climate science. Steve Cox, former Alaska attorney general and current counsel to Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, said during a Tuesday conference call that municipalities and states are pursuing coordinated tort and public nuisance litigation to achieve through the courts what they cannot accomplish through democratically elected officials.
O.H. Skinner, former Arizona solicitor general and executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, said the case is «not a fight about climate change» or «climate science.» Instead, he described it as a fight about «whether we're going to allow this maneuver to be what reshapes American society,» adding that everyone should care regardless of their views on climate policy.
Skinner acknowledged that Alito did not reach his decision lightly but said it is «never good for the court» when a justice is absent from a ruling. «This is part of why the left constantly screaming at the justices about recusal and other things is counterproductive for the country,» he said. «It doesn't help the court when they don't have their full complement.»
He added that Alito made the decision knowing those considerations and based on his own personal circumstances, and that the details may never be fully known. Even so, Skinner said the recusal is not something conservatives view as dispositive of the case or as particularly noteworthy beyond the fact that Alito made the choice he believed was right.
Attention has also focused on Justice Elena Kagan, who has faced calls to recuse herself from Suncor v. Boulder. Critics point to her foreword to the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, which included a climate science chapter later criticized by Congress and Republican attorneys general as biased and eventually removed. In July, more than a dozen legal groups, in a letter spearheaded by Severino, urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to open an investigation into whether Kagan can impartially decide the case.
«Justice Kagan's endorsement of the partisan and now-removed climate science chapter of the judges' reference manual continues to raise questions about her ability to impartially decide the case,» Severino said. «I hope she is taking her own ethical obligation seriously.»
With Alito's withdrawal, the court will hear the Boulder case with eight participating justices. The arguments are expected to test how far state and local governments can go in using tort law to seek damages from energy producers over the effects of a warming climate, a question with implications for similar suits filed across the country.
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