Oil Companies Fight Climate Lawsuits by Citing Free Speech
Oil companies are employing an unusual tactic in some of their biggest court battles. They're alleging that their critics are infringing on their free-speech rights, invoking laws designed to protect people who challenge the powerful.
The laws, known as 'anti-SLAPP' provisions, were created to stop companies or people from silencing their critics with the threat of costly lawsuits. Oil companies have turned this around, arguing that climate lawsuits against them should be thrown out because they infringe on the companies' protections under the First Amendment.
'What we're seeing now is a complete inversion' of the original intent of these laws, said Nicole Ligon, an assistant professor of law at Campbell University in North Carolina and expert on freedom of speech and SLAPP, which is shorthand for strategic lawsuit against public participation. The laws offer judges a way to dismiss cases that they determine lack merit.
This strategy is playing out in courtrooms nationwide, particularly where oil companies are fighting lawsuits filed by state and local governments that claim the industry has misled Americans about global warming and should help pay the cost of adapting to climate change.
The industry considers these climate lawsuits a major threat. Nearly 40 have been filed since 2017. They are seeking potentially billions of dollars in damages.
Recently, the cases have come under increased scrutiny as the Trump administration has sought to stop them, even pre-emptively suing Hawaii and Michigan to try to block them from filing their own climate-change lawsuits. (Hawaii sued anyway, and Michigan has said it will.)
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