Supreme Court allows local climate suits
Justices reject challenges to gun laws, deny Meta appeal of class action
By: Maureen Groppe
USA Today
WASHINGTON - In a series of significant announcements on Monday, [01/13/2025] the Supreme Court has allowed state and ;local climate suits against oil companies to proceed, turned away gun law challenges in Delaware and Maryland, and rebuffed Meta's bid to avoid an advertisers' lawsuit.
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Oil and gas companies have fail for now to convince the Supreme Court to stop numerous lawsuits filed across the country seeking to recover damages for harms caused by climate change.
..... The court on Monday [01/13/2025] declined to consider if federal law prevents states and cities from suing the companies.
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The fossil fuel industry said it was critically important for the court to weigh in now before it spends significant resources fighting the suits, which oil companies said are a "serious threat to one of the nation's most vital industries."
..... "The stakes in this case could not be higher," lawyers for multiple companies told the Supreme Court in appealing a decision by the Hawaii Supreme Court allowing a suit there to move forward.
..... The Supreme Court in recent years had rejected the industry's effort to move the cases to federal court.
..... The outgoing Biden administration had urged the court not to get involved at this stage. The Justice Department argued that the state Supreme Court's decision was correct and that because this is a state suit, the Supreme Court can't weigh in while the litigation in ongoing.
..... The administration also opposes an effort by GOP-led states to block the suits. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to take a different position.
..... States and municipalities suing the oil and gas companies argue the industry deliberately concealed and misrepresented the environmental impacts of fossil fuels while promoting their product.
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The suits are modeled after the successful challenges to tobacco and opioid companies and rely on consumer protection statues and public nuisance claims. But fossil fuel companies say climate change is not a local issue.
..... "Lawsuits like this one seeking to regulate global emissions are beyond the limits of state law,: lawyers for Shell wrote in a brief.
..... Lawyers for Honolulu said the city is not trying to regulate pollution but to be compensated for the local impacts of climate change attributable to the companion's "deceptive conduct."
Court rejects gun law challenges
..... The Supreme Court declined on Monday [01/13/2025] to hear a bid to block Delaware;s prohibition on assault-style rifles and large-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as a challenge to Maryland's handgun licensing requirements, sidestepping tow cases involving the divisive issue of gun rights.
..... The justices turned away an appeal by a group of gun enthusiasts and firearm advocacy groups of a lower court's refusal to issue a preliminary injunction ban on "assault weapons" and magazines that can hold more than 17 rounds. Such weapons have been used in numerous mass shootings.
..... The justices also rejected an appeal by a gun rights group called Maryland Shall Issue and other plaintiffs of a lower court's ruling that upheld the state's licensing law as permissible under the Constitution's Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms.
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While the justices declined to hear these two cases, the court did not act on two separate appeals involving challenges to Maryland's ban on assault weapons and one in Rhode Island on large capacity ammuniit6ons magazines.
..... Delaware's gun safety laws, enacted in 2022, ban various semiautomatic "assault" long guns including the AR-15 and AK47, allow those who owned such weapons before the law to keep them under certain conditions. the measure prohibiting large-capacity magazines apples to those devices owned before the law took effect. The challengers in the case are state residents seeking to purchase the banned guns or magazines, a firearms dealer, the Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation.
..... Maryland's 2013 law requires most residents to obtain a qualification license before purchasing a hand gun, requiring applicants to be fingerprinted, attend training and submit to background checks.
..... The challengers side the regime is too onerous and the requirement 'can take a month or longer: to fulfill, deterring individuals from exercising their Second Amendment rights.
Court reject Meta appeal
..... The Supreme Court also on Monday [01/13/2025] rejected a bid by Meta Platforms to avoid a multi-billion dollar class action by advertisers that accused the Facebook and Instagram parent company of overcharging them by inflating the number of people their ads might reach.
..... The justices turned away Meta's appeal of a lower court's decision that let advertises seek damages as a group over Meta's claims about the "potential reach" of tier ads.
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A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against Menlo Park, California-based Meta in March 2024. the panel said that because Meta provided the same alleged misrepresentation about how many people might see ads, the advertisers could try to prove that their damages, which they said could exceed $7 billion, stemmed from a"common course of conduct."
..... Led by former Meta advertisers DZ Reserve and Cain Maxwell, the plaintiffs faulted Meta for focusing on the number of social media accounts, not the lower number of actual people and said it fraudulently overestimated potential viewers by as much as 400%.
..... In its appeals, Meta said at least three federal appeals courts have rejected the "common course of conduct" test. The company said the test ignored how some advertisers may have found its alleged misrepresentation immaterial, or chose not to rely on it.
..... Meta also said the 9th Circuit, relative to nearly every other federal appeals court, gives too much deference to federal district judges who initially certify class actions, including in advertisers' case.
..... Ads generate substantially all of Meta's revenue, which totaled $116.1 billion in the first nine months of 2024.
Contributing: Reuters.