Justice Samuel Alito will sit out a major Supreme Court climate case against oil companies set for October, with no reason given for the move.
Supreme Court Clerk Scott Harris told the parties in a letter that Justice Samuel Alito has decided he will not keep hearing Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, a high-profile climate liability fight scheduled for arguments on Oct. 5.
The letter gave no explanation. Arguments fall on the first day of the Court’s new term, one week after the Monday notice.
Boulder County and other Colorado local governments sued Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil. They want to use state law to collect damages for the companies’ alleged contributions to climate change. The oil companies asked the justices to decide whether federal law blocks those state-law claims.
Reuters reported the case could affect dozens of similar state and local suits, and that the Trump administration is backing the companies.
Harris wrote the parties directly. The key line was plain.
Supreme Court Clerk Scott Harris stated:
"I am writing to inform the parties that Justice Alito has determined that he will not continue to participate in this case."
That is the full public record so far. The Court has not said whether its code of conduct drove the decision. Under that code, a justice should step aside when a reasonable person familiar with the facts might question the justice’s impartiality. A financial interest in a party or in the subject of a case is one listed ground. The Court has not confirmed either ground applies here.
Alito remains a core vote on a Court that still holds a 6-3 conservative majority, a balance he recently reaffirmed when he confirmed he will stay on the bench.
In May, a coalition of 30 organizations asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate Alito’s role in the case. The groups pointed to his holdings in oil and gas companies. They also noted he had stayed out of an earlier Supreme Court decision involving the same companies and the same dispute, then took part when the justices voted in February to hear this appeal.
The Court previously addressed a related question through a spokeswoman. She told NBC News that Alito had no financial interest in any party to the case and that the Court’s legal counsel had advised him he was not required to recuse.
Reuters added that Alito owns stock in several oil and gas firms, including ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, but not in the named defendants ExxonMobil or Suncor Energy.
That distinction matters under the Court’s own rules. Ownership in the actual parties is one bright line. Ownership in the broader industry is a different question, and the Monday letter does not resolve it.
Alito withdrew shortly before arguments in a different oil-industry case earlier this year. In that matter, the Court explained he held a financial interest in ConocoPhillips. A ConocoPhillips subsidiary had remained a party in a lower court even after the company left the Supreme Court proceedings.
The pattern is now public: one recusal tied to a concrete ConocoPhillips holding, a prior stay-out in an earlier round of this Colorado dispute, participation in the February grant of review, outside groups demanding a Senate probe, and now a fresh decision not to continue in the merits case set for Oct. 5.
Democrats who dislike the Court’s current majority have already floated structural changes, including the kind of overhaul talk captured when Democrats eyed Supreme Court overhaul plans if they regain power in Washington.
None of that supplies the missing sentence in Harris’s letter. The Court still has not said what changed between the February vote to hear the case and the Monday notice.
The underlying suit is a damages case dressed in climate language. Local governments in Colorado say Suncor and ExxonMobil contributed to climate change and should pay under state law. The companies say federal law occupies the field and shuts those claims down. That is the question the justices agreed to take.
If the Court sides with the companies, similar suits around the country face a steeper climb. If the local governments prevail on the threshold issue, more state-law climate damages actions can proceed. Either result reaches well beyond Boulder County.
Alito’s absence leaves an eight-justice Court for this argument. A 4-4 split would leave the lower-court result in place without a national rule. The companies came to Washington for a clear federal answer. They may not get one from a full bench.
Recent terms have already shown how this majority handles enforcement and election fights, including when the Supreme Court let Trump DHS scrub illegal immigrants from voter rolls and when it cleared a path for a mail-voting order.
Those cases turned on statutes and executive power. This one turns on whether state courts can impose climate damages on energy producers under state tort theories. The legal machinery is different. The stakes for energy policy and local litigation strategy are not small.
The public record still lacks several basics. The Monday letter does not state the ground for recusal. It does not say whether a financial interest in a party or in the subject matter applies. It does not list the specific holdings the May coalition flagged. And it does not explain why Alito participated in the February decision to grant review, then stepped away before the October argument.
Alito has not been shy about marking disagreement with colleagues when he believes the Court has gone wrong, including when he called a birthright citizenship ruling a serious mistake with grotesque results. Silence on the recusal ground is a different posture. Here the Court has chosen not to explain.
Justices control their own recusal calls. The code supplies standards. It does not require a written public rationale every time a justice steps aside. That practice leaves parties, senators, and the public reading tea leaves from docket letters and old stock disclosures.
For now the operative fact is simple. Alito will not sit. The climate liability appeal will be argued without him on Oct. 5. The companies still want a federal-law shield. The Colorado governments still want state-law damages. And the only official sentence on the recusal remains the clerk’s notice that the justice “will not continue to participate.”
Local governments trying to run national energy policy through state tort suits just lost one vote they wanted off the bench, and the Court still owes the country a clear rule on whether federal law actually bars the gambit.