Hawaii marches big oil companies to court

A lawsuit by the city of Honolulu, together with some local agencies, seeking financial damages, was brought in 2020 against big oil, Sunoco, shell, and others, claiming they knowingly deceived citizens on the relationship between oil, gas and the climate. The Supreme Court of Hawaii ruled on the case in 2023 in favor of the City of Honolulu. At the time, the case was seen by observers as a novel move , mainly because climate issues were considered to be under the legal jurisdiction of the Federal Government, not the State Government, and would thereby render a Hawaii court’s verdict in favor of the plaintiff as unconstitutional. Unconstitutionality was in fact, the defendants’ main defense in the case.

Reporting on the case, the Jurist News, jurist.org/news, claims that it sought to hold liable what it considered “an effort by large oil companies to deceive the general public about the environmental risks of greenhouse gasses,” mainly in the form of public advertisements by the defendants. The court ruled that the case could proceed under the law of negligence and that the law of negligence, in this case, did not violate the Federal Government’s jurisdiction.

In an effort to block the decision of the Hawaii Supreme Court that allowed the case to proceed, the defendants led by Sunoco and Shell, appealed the ruling to the United States Supreme Court. In January, 2025 the the United States Supreme court declared its refusal to hear the case, which in effect validates the previous ruling of the Hawaii Supreme Court.

With knowledge that the State of Hawaii itself was planning another lawsuit against big oil companies, the United States (Federal) Justice Department preemptively filed a lawsuit in the courts on 30th April, 2025, against the State of Hawaii (and others), in an effort to quash the impending lawsuit. Disregarding the Justice Department’s lawsuit, the State of Hawaii filed its lawsuit the next day, May 1st, 2025, against big oil, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell.

As stated by the Governor’s website, governor.hawaii.gov, the lawsuit against the companies is “for their deceptive conduct and failure to warn about their products’ climate change danger, now harming Hawaii’s public health, infrastructure, natural resources and economy.” Regarding the Federal Justice Department’s seeming intervention, the Governor’s website states, “the use of the United States Department of Justice to fight on behalf of the fossil fuel industry is deeply disturbing and is a direct attack on Hawaii’s rights as a sovereign state,” according to governor.hawaii.gov. It is probably fair to say that the reason for the Justice Department’s actions in these cases, must be seen in the context of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.

Trials in all the above court cases are pending.

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