The national climate litigation campaign chalked up another defeat earlier this month when a North Carolina judge dismissed a high-profile lawsuit against Duke Energy. This dismissal comes as the Supreme Court announced last week that it will take up a major climate lawsuit in Boulder, Colorado. That outcome from the Supreme Court, due sometime in early 2027, will impact dozens of lawsuits across the United States.
Latest Dismissal in Carrboro
North Carolina dismissal involved a case brought by the Town of Carrboro with support from climate activists at NC Warn and the Center for Biological Diversity. Carrboro’s case marked the first time a municipality sued its own electric provider for alleged climate-related damages. But Judge Mark Davis of the North Carolina Business rejected the claims, delivering yet another setback to the coordinated effort to stretch state tort law into a vehicle for global climate policy.
Carrboro’s complaint attempted to link hurricanes and other weather events to climate change and sought damages from Duke Energy for costs related to flooding prevention, road repairs, and cooling public buildings. And while this lawsuit may have its own local flavor, it runs headlong into the same brick wall as dozens of similar cases filed in state and local courts around the country: can state and local governments use tort law as a backdoor mechanism to regulate global greenhouse gas emissions?
Judge Davis made clear that answer is still a resounding “no.” As he wrote in the dismissal:
“Carrboro’s claims in this action are clearly nonjusticiable pursuant to the political question doctrine.” (emphasis added)
Translated: this is not a question courts are allowed to answer, no matter how creatively it’s packaged. The judiciary can’t rewrite national climate policy from the bench – even if a town would very much like to send Duke Energy the invoice.
Judge Davis’s invocation of the political question doctrine marks one of the clearest and most direct applications of that doctrine in the climate nuisance context to date. Courts have previously dismissed similar state and local climate lawsuits on grounds such as federal displacement, preemption, or standing.
But Davis went further, concluding that attributing and allocating responsibility for global emissions is fundamentally a matter reserved for the elected branches.
And like its many predecessors, Carrboro’s suit hits another familiar legal hurdle: preemption by the Clean Air Act, which reserves federal authority over regulating air emissions.
The Science and Causation Debate
Additionally, Carrboro’s attempt to conflate individual weather events with long-term climate trends has been met with bipartisan skepticism. Dr. Steven E. Koonin, who served as undersecretary for science at the U.S. Department of Energy during the Obama Administration, stated:
“Pointing to hurricanes as an example of the ravages of human-caused climate change is at best unconvincing, and at worst plainly dishonest.”
As the court recognized, global emissions are influenced by a complex web of national and international actors that extend well beyond any one individual, company or country. As Judge Davis further explained:
“Carrboro’s assertion ignores the fact that many significant issues regarding climate change are not only the subject of complex scientific debate but also implicate political, economic, and moral choices made by governments and members of the public literally across the globe.”
That reality is particularly evident in North Carolina, where fossil fuels remain central to energy reliability and affordability. Fossil fuels provide nearly half of the state’s electricity generation, and federal data show the state’s electricity rates are roughly one-third lower than the national average. Moreover, the NC Department of Environmental Quality (NC DEQ) announced this month that the state’s greenhouse gas emissions are at their lowest in over two decades.
Activists continue to press these novel legal theories aimed at domestic energy companies, but courts across the country are increasingly skeptical. Judges have repeatedly concluded that climate change – by definition a global phenomenon – cannot be resolved through piecemeal state tort claims.
And as U.S. District Court Judge John Keenan stated in his dismissal of a similar lawsuit brought by New York City:
“To litigate such an action for injuries from foreign greenhouse gas emissions in federal court would severely infringe upon the foreign-policy decisions that are squarely within the purview of the political branches of the U.S. Government.”
Bottom Line: Carrboro’s dismissal is yet another reminder that efforts to transform courts into venues for rewriting national and global energy policy – while targeting the very companies keeping communities powered – continue to run into legal reality. Energy policy is a matter for legislatures and voters, not for courtroom workarounds.
