Maryland high court rejects localities’ plea for climate change damages

The court held that the U.S. Constitution and federal law preempts state claims arising from out-of-state and international greenhouse gas emissions.

by Joe Dodson, Court House News, March 24, 2026 

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (CN) — The Supreme Court of Maryland denied a trio of localities’ attempt to hold multinational oil and gas companies accountable for their role in global climate change.

The court held that Baltimore, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County’s attempt to recover damages violates the Constitution and federal laws, including the Clean Air Act, that preempt state common-law tort claims based on global greenhouse gas emissions. The court further held that state courts are not the appropriate venue for localities to regulate international conduct.

“To hold the defendants responsible for foreign activity would necessarily require them to internalize the costs of climate change, which, in turn, would presumably affect the price and production of fossil fuels abroad,” Maryland Justice Brynja Booth wrote for the majority. “It would also bypass the various diplomatic channels that the United States uses to address this issue, such as the U.N. framework and the Paris agreement."

The localities sued over two dozen companies, including Chevron, BP and Shell, along with an energy trade association, claiming they misled the public about the dangers associated with fossil fuel production, despite knowing for nearly 50 years of its link to climate change. The companies’ discrediting of scientific evidence amounts to a public and private nuisance, negligence, failure to warn and trespass, according to the localities.

“No amount of creative pleading can masquerade the fact that the local governments are attempting to utilize state law to regulate global conduct that is purportedly causing global harm,” Booth wrote.

The companies removed the case to federal court, which, after a trip to the Supreme Court, remanded it back to the state court. The lower state courts granted the companies’ motions to dismiss the complaints, reasoning that Congress never intended for individual states to handle global pollution-related complaints.

“Appellants’ claims are not limited to allegedly tortious conduct in their respective jurisdictions, or even in Maryland, but instead are based on countless decisions made over more than a century by billions of individuals around the world to use oil and gas for innumerable productive purposes and on the decisions of local, state and national policymakers in the United States and around the world,” the companies, represented by Baker Donelson, wrote in their brief urging dismissal.

The localities argued the lower courts failed to view their claims as concerning the deception rather than the companies’ emissions of fossil fuels. The localities hoped the court would share the views of the Supreme Courts of Hawaii and Colorado, which denied motions to dismiss similar claims.

“Appellants’ complaints target defendants’ alleged ‘misinformation campaign that contributed to [appellants’] injuries’ from the impacts of climate change,” the localities wrote in their brief. “Appellants do not allege defendants violated any legal duty by manufacturing or burning fossil fuels, by lawfully selling those products or by releasing pollution."

The majority disagreed.

“The ultimate conduct is the use of greenhouse gases across the globe, and the ultimate harm asserted by the local governments arises from global emissions,” Booth wrote. “The local governments’ police powers do not extend beyond their respective borders and certainly do not authorize the policing of worldwide conduct.”

Justices Shirley Watts and Peter Killough dissented from the majority on some of the claims, holding that the localities’ claims are akin to fraud claims and that the Clean Air Act doesn’t preclude them.

“When a state court decides a question of federal preemption, its task is strictly defined: determine what Congress said, not what a court thinks Congress might have preferred, and not what the defendants say the case is about,” Killough wrote. “While BP does indeed operate refineries that are stationary sources subject to CAA permits, the operation of those refineries has nothing to do with BP’s downstream marketing of petroleum products to consumers who then burn them.”

The majority held that the claims aren’t legally cognizable regardless of whether federal law displaces them. It held that public nuisance claims are not a tort but rather a public action the government pursues to stop harmful conduct. The case is the latest in a long line of attempts to impose liability and damages on industries, including the automobile industry, for their role in increasing greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

The case drew the attention of 24 other states, including Alabama and Ohio, which submitted briefs in support of the companies.

“They seek billions of dollars in damages and disgorgement. Amici states do not share these aims, which would imperil access to affordable energy everywhere, nor their sweeping theory of liability, which could inculpate ‘billions of third parties,’” the states wrote in their amicus brief. “These lawsuits illustrate precisely why state law cannot supply the decision rule for liability premised on interstate gas emissions.”

Atlantic Legal Foundation, a nonprofit public-interest firm that advocates for free enterprise, and the Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel also filed a brief supporting the companies.

“State courts have no business entertaining damages suits for the alleged local effects of global climate change,” Larry Ebner with the Atlantic Legal Foundation said in a press release.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in the near future in Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, a case that similarly asks the court to consider whether federal law preempts state-law claims seeking relief for injuries caused by interstate and international greenhouse gas emissions. Attorneys representing the localities did not respond to a request for comment.

“Quite simply, the notion that a local government such as Baltimore, Annapolis or Anne Arundel County may pursue state law nuisance claims against the defendants — seeking injunctive relief to abate injuries arising from global greenhouse effects arising from worldwide conduct — is so far afield from any area of traditional state or local responsibility that it cannot be seriously contemplated,” Booth wrote.