The Supreme Court has scheduled oral argument Oct. 4 in a climate lawsuit case that will decide whether local governments can sue oil companies for damages from bad weather, which they claim oil companies are causing, or if the impact of global emissions is a federal issue that can't be addressed by state laws. 

The case stems from a lawsuit that the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, filed against oil companies in 2018, claiming they concealed the impact of their products on the climate, which makes them liable for damages caused by bad weather. The stakes are high, as evidenced by the dozens of "friend of the court" briefs that have been filed in the case for both the defendants and the plaintiffs. 

Do what we say, not what we do

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., led 89 Democratic members of Congress in filing a brief in support of the case. The brief includes a chart purporting to show that briefs in support of the defendants have been funded by "fossil fuel-linked donors." These included the oft-demonized Koch Brothers, as well as oil majors, such as Chevron and ExxonMobil. 

The anti-energy brief curiously ignores the dark-money network connected to Whitehouse. Victor Sher and Matt Edling, founding partners of the Sher Edling law firm, which is spearheading the climate litigation campaign against oil companies, have donated thousands of dollars to Whitehouse's election campaigns, according to public records.

In 2019, The Wall Street Journal's editorial board took Whitehouse to task for advocating that amicus briefs disclose financial connections to the parties in a climate case, while at the same time failing to disclose Sher's and Edling's donations when filing briefs in support of cases Sher Edling is involved in. 

Research and judicial training

The law firm's fingerprints are also seen in the development of research in support of the defendants in climate cases and the training of judges overseeing climate cases.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Victor Sher seeking information about the law firm's role in the Environmental Law Institute's Climate Judiciary Project, which produces training materials for judges who are overseeing climate cases. 

The project has been accused of being biased in favor of the plaintiffs in those cases, because it excludes all scientific material that would be unfavorable to their cases. 

In the letter, Jordan points out that research from Michael Burger, who is Of Counsel with Sher Edling and executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, which advocates for waging litigation campaigns against oil companies, is included in the Climate Judiciary Project's materials without disclosing his interest in the plaintiff's position. 

Jordan's letter suggests that "evidence exists that Mr. Burger may have ghostwritten parts of a chapter on Climate Science in the Fourth Edition of the Federal Judicial Center's Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence [...] The FJC recently removed the chapter from the manual after twenty-seven state attorneys general noted that the material was authored by biased climate litigation activists and designed to predispose judges in favor of plaintiffs."

Burger joined Victor Sher and Matt Edling in filing a brief in support of Boulder's case. 

Using courts as pathways to policymaking

Critics of these lawsuits argue that they will not only inflict huge costs on consumers, they're a means by which climate activists are trying to create national energy policy through the courts rather than through legislatures that are directly beholden to their voting constituencies. 

It's a claim that some of those involved in the cases have confirmed openly. David Bookbinder, director of law & policy at the Environmental Integrity Project, worked for years on the legal team that brought the lawsuit on behalf of the county of Boulder. 

Speaking during a Federalist Society webinar titled "Can State Courts Set Global Climate Policy," in September 2025, Bookbinder explained that the goal of the lawsuit was to advance climate policies, specifically carbon taxes, which are costs that would be passed onto consumers. 

Even people who don't drive cars will be impacted

"Essentially, the tort liability is an indirect carbon tax. You sue an oil company, an oil company is liable. The oil company then passes that liability on to the people who are buying its products. In some sense, it is the most efficient way — the people who buy those products are now going to be paying for the cost imposed by those products," Bookbinder explained, according to the National Review. 

Since all products and services require energy from fossil fuels to be produced, and many products contain materials derived from petroleum, the "people who buy those products" to which Bookbinder is referring are literally every consumer in the U.S. 

The Boulder case is only one of dozens of climate cases winding their way through state courts. How the high court rules on the case, legal experts say, will determine if global emissions are governed by a hodgepodge of climate policies that are set state-by-state based on state court rulings, or if policies on those emissions can be rounded up and determined by federal law.