2020 announcement of Minnesota’s big oil lawsuit
Matt Doll, Minnesota Environmental Partnership
The Minnesota Attorney General’s office secured a key legal victory last week in its lawsuit against fossil fuel industry groups for their climate deceptions. A court in Ramsey County threw out the defendants’ attempts to quash the lawsuit, though it did dismiss one of the five counts brought by Attorney General Keith Ellison.
The lawsuit, first filed in 2024, targets ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute (API) for decades of deception regarding the science behind climate change. These industry giants, the lawsuit alleges, have deceived Minnesotans on what is causing rapid climate change (fossil fuels) and what it will cost us.
Importantly, the Attorney General’s lawsuit relies on proving the defendants liable under common law and Minnesota statutes, meaning that the lawsuit can remain at the state level. Similar lawsuits in other states and jurisdictions have used the same strategy.
The defendants have tried repeatedly to move the lawsuit to federal court, where they judge their chances of defeating it to be stronger, but federal courts have agreed with Attorney General Ellison and sent it back to Minnesota. Even the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the oil companies’ appeal.
We’re glad that the federal courts ruled the way they did. While climate change is a global issue, the systematic, purposeful deception of Minnesotans by fossil fuel companies is very much a state concern.
It’s well-established that fossil fuel companies have conspired to use deception and misdirection to slow down policies and investments that would help the climate – and make our communities more livable – but hurt their bottom line. They knew that their products were harming the climate, and they didn’t care.
They’ve paid for false or misleading “studies” to contradict the overwhelming consensus on climate science. They’ve attacked climate-friendly tools like transit investments and vehicle electrification that reduce air pollution. They’ve greenwashed their own practices and fossil fueled technologies like gas stoves.
It might be difficult to imagine how much further Minnesota and the nation might have advanced on clean, affordable energy if fossil fuels hadn’t successfully discredited legitimate climate science. We’re now seeing the clear impacts of warming temperature: dry winters, scorching summers, and chaos for farmers and our natural ecosystems. The costs, once blurred by industry deceptions, are now clearly adding up.
The question remaining is how Minnesota courts will rule on the industry’s responsibility, given that it appears the case will move forward. Keeping the lawsuit moving is a major victory, but it’s certain that the well-resourced fossil fuel industry will try to manipulate the trial at every juncture to its advantage.
We hope to see the people of Minnesota victorious in this historic case. False statements that cause us harm for corporate profit amount to fraud, plain and simple. Winning this case would make it clear what these companies have done and help boost efforts to fight the crisis they’ve done so much to create.