Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil attempts to deal with uniquely federal issues “under the guise of state consumer protection law,” the company argued in a recent filing explaining why the case should not be remanded back to state court. As the filing summarizes: “Litigation about the appropriate use of fossil fuels and the global issues presented by climate change belongs in a federal forum.”
ExxonMobil moved the case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in late November, arguing that Healey was using state-level law enforcement authority as a pretext to advance a political agenda against energy companies. Massachusetts filed a motion to remand back to state court in December 2019, maintaining that its lawsuit was “state-law-based.” This has been the general course of action seen in climate litigation cases across the country, with plaintiffs banking on a better chance of success at the state level.
Last week, however, ExxonMobil shot back against that strategy, arguing that the attorney general “cannot avoid federal jurisdiction simply because it has omitted the language of federal law from its complaint.”
Massachusetts’s motion to remand relies on cherry picked language that did not properly represent the heart of its case, ExxonMobil’s counsel argues. For example, the attorney general’s motion to try the case in state court makes no reference to the myriad national and globally focused statements in its original complaint. For example, the October complaint claims, “[T]he world must swiftly shift away from fossil fuel energy or else face catastrophic impacts to humankind and the environment.”
To that end, the company argues that the focus of Healey’s complaint is not just about marketing materials in Massachusetts, but instead is aimed at impacting the industry overall. As the filing states,
“Under the guise of state consumer protection law, Plaintiff would have this Court punish ExxonMobil for advertising claims, ‘even if . . . technically true,’ see Compl. ¶ 245, because Plaintiff deems the production and use of fossil fuels to be unsafe…Plaintiff’s causes of action are therefore not about consumer protection or representations made in advertisements in Massachusetts, but the fact that the products are manufactured and sold at all.” (emphasis added)
In other words, because the attorney general is looking to stop ExxonMobil from legally advertising and selling their products – not just in the state, but internationally – state court is not the arena in which to address these issues. The filing neatly summarizes this point, stating:
“Indeed, to the extent [the Massachusetts attorney general] seeks to reduce or eliminate the sale of fossil fuel products, this case sits at the intersection of federal energy and environmental regulations, while necessarily implicating foreign policy and national security considerations. The substantiality inquiry is satisfied when the federal issues in a case concern even one of these subjects.”
The claims brought forth by Massachusetts fall squarely under federal jurisdiction. As ExxonMobil concluded in their filing, a granted motion to remand would have a negative ripple effect for the entire U.S. legal system: “Any different result would allow a single state, through creative pleading, to reshape longstanding national and international policy decisions about the appropriate use of fossil fuels and potential impacts of climate change.”
