Exxon Sues California For Tort Of ‘Because There’s Six Clowns On The US Supreme Court Who’d Let Them Win, That’s Why’

In a novel — and supremely dickish — twist, ExxonMobil is suing the state of California in federal court, claiming that complying with two climate laws the state passed in 2023 would violate the corporation’s free speech rights. Who knows? It might even be stupid enough to win over the six-Bozo majority on the US Supreme Court.

Exxon’s complaint says that California’s laws are trying to force it to “serve as a mouthpiece for ideas with which it disagrees,” which would supposedly violate the First Amendment’s protections against “compelled speech.” As you may recall, the US Supreme Court decided in 2018 that California couldn’t make “crisis pregnancy centers” inform people that they can get an abortion, because that would violate anti-abortion groups’ rights. Exxon is clearly hoping to try something similar with this case, claiming that the California statutes “compel ExxonMobil to trumpet California’s preferred message even though ExxonMobil believes the speech is misleading and misguided,” and that’s the same thing as trying to make an antiabortion group inform women that they can get legally get an abortion in California.

The lawsuit doesn’t go quite so far as saying that complying with any regulations that require corporate citizens to disclose information violates protections against compelled speech, but it sure seems close to that. Rather, ExxonMobil is claiming that the standard California requires for disclosure — which happens to be a worldwide measure used for reporting in line with the Paris Climate Agreement — promotes the view that big corporations are primarily responsible for climate change, “for the avowed purpose of spurring public opprobrium and policy responses.” After all, some of the legislators who wrote the bills said they would force big polluting companies to take responsibility for their emissions, and just look at how political that was.

Exxon says that it has for years disclosed its greenhouse gas emissions using a 1974 reporting standard created by the oil and gas industry. But the two mean and politically biased California laws, known together as the “California Climate Accountability Package,” require that large companies doing business in California report their greenhouse emissions using a different methodology called the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Protocol. California didn’t just make up the standard out of thin, carbon-saturated air, either. It was established in 1990 and has become a global standard for reporting emissions. (Fun fact: The protocol was developed by The World Resources Institute, a DC research group, and by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a business coalition that even includes oil companies like Chevron and Shell, not that Exxon mentions that in the lawsuit.)

Under that protocol, companies must report not only their own “Scope 1” emissions — in this case, the emissions Exxon directly causes through drilling, shipping, and refining fossil fuels — but also the “Scope 3” emissions that result from others actually using the products a company produces and sells. That would include all the gasoline and diesel fuels that go into American cars, trucks, boats, and generators, so you can see why Exxon and other oil companies would prefer to pretend the only emissions it’s responsible for are those it creates directly as it produces oil and oil accessories.

Once the stuff is refined, it’s miraculously no longer Exxon’s responsibility if someone buys it and burns it, causing global warming. It’s not Exxon’s fault, it’s you filthy polluting car and truck operators! You could have chosen to get an EV or only power your home with electricity generated by wind and solar, but did you? You did not. Shame on you.

(Were you wondering what Scope 2 emissions were? They’re emissions that result from second parties a company uses in doing business, like those produced in generating electricity Exxon uses. Exxon doesn’t gripe about those in the lawsuit.)

Exxon claims that the methodology used to calculate emissions is flawed, and that reporting emissions using the protocol misrepresents its role in contributing to climate change. It also objects to the other law in the package, which requires companies to estimate their climate-related financial risks, because that would force the company to speculate “about unknowable future developments” when really, the future is completely impossible to anticipate, isn’t it?

On top of all that, the lawsuit claims that California should be prohibited from demanding data on the company’s worldwide emissions, because it’s none of California’s business:

While California might believe that making Exxon Mobil report historical emissions for an oil refinery acquired in Canada or speculative business risks for a Kazakhstan pipeline is the best way to spur climate solutions, Exxon Mobil disagrees.

Requiring Exxon to report that would actually force the company to take part in “a policy of stigmatization” by forcing the poor corporate giant to accept California’s characterization of greenhouse emissions as bad just because they’re related to a big corporation. What about the little artisanal mom-and pop oil refineries?

California argues that Exxon is simply trying to evade responsibility by clothing the lawsuit in a First Amendment claim. State Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a filing in a related case filed by the US Chamber of Commerce that if anything, the laws promote First Amendment goals by giving investors the information they need to make fully informed choices. And in another brief in that case, Deputy AG Caitlan McLoon, who couldn’t have had an easy time in junior high school, pointed out that “Plaintiffs have yet to explain how the laws compel even a single company to state a political or ideological opinion.”

So far, Exxon hasn’t claimed that having to report its emissions violates its deeply held religious beliefs or its Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination, but if the free speech claim doesn’t hold water with the Supremes when this case gets there, we’ll see what else the oil company lawyers come up with.

[Guardian / NYT]

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Muh Free Speach!