FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jeff Hauser, hauser@therevolvingdoorproject.org
On Monday the Supreme Court agreed to hear a petition from oil companies Suncor and ExxonMobil who want the Court to shut down the climate deception case being brought against the companies by Boulder County, San Miguel County, and the City of Boulder. This petition is one of the oil and gas industry’s many ongoing attempts to evade liability for concealing the harms of its product.
Oil companies were counting on the Supreme Court’s inconsistent recusal practices and unenforced ethics standards to allow their petition to be heard by justices with a vested interest in the industry’s future.
The Revolving Door Project has previously exposed Exxon’s unethical play to use the Boulder case as a vehicle to foreclose communities and states from this broader avenue for relief, and has dug into the oil industry ties of four of the six conservative justices for The American Prospect.
“Alito’s failure to recuse from considering this petition underscores how unacceptably low our ethics standards are for our highest court,” said Revolving Door Project Deputy Research Director Hannah Story Brown.
While the recent repeal of the greenhouse gas endangerment finding punctures one of the oil industry’s main arguments for why these cases should not proceed, this Supreme Court has proven itself willing to disregard standards of legal consistency along with those of ethics.
“As corruption displaces legal precedent as the most salient framework for understanding the Court’s decisions, the rule of law grows increasingly frail,” said Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser. “Supreme Court ethics reform should be a top priority for any political leader invested in democracy.”
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