Supreme Court lets Hawaii sue oil companies over climate change effects

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to decide whether to block lawsuits that Honolulu filed to seek billions in damages from oil and gas companies over allegedly deceptive marketing campaigns that hid the effects of climate change.

Now those lawsuits can proceed, surely frustrating the fossil fuel industry, which felt that SCOTUS should have weighed in on this key "recurring question of extraordinary importance to the energy industry" raised in lawsuits seeking similarly high damages in several states, CBS News reported.

As the cases move forward, Honolulu maintains that it will not seek damages for interstate pollution or try to regulate emissions. It is instead challenging the fossil fuel industry practice of promoting its products "without warning" of climate change effects, which was allegedly "abetted by a sophisticated disinformation campaign" that Honolulu argued was "deliberately concealing and misrepresenting the climate-change impacts of their fossil-fuel products."