Boulder’s Dark Money Friends Show Up At The Supreme Court

On Oct. 5, the United States Supreme Court will hear argument in Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, the most consequential climate liability lawfare case to ever reach the Court.

As I have written previously, the Boulder case is just one of over three dozen climate change lawsuits brought by left-wing states, cities, and counties across America. And while each of the climate plaintiffs presents its case as a matter of resolving local harms resulting from the energy industry’s purported role in climate change, their real aim is broader: to reshape American energy policy and the American economy one state court verdict at a time.

Earlier in August, more than two dozen nonprofit groups, academics, former government officials and other interested parties filed amicus briefs supporting Boulder. Least surprising were the blue cities and counties, joined by their counsel at the leading climate plaintiffs’ firm Sher Edling, pleading with the Court to keep their climate lawfare cases alive. But the left’s lawfare machine didn’t stop there, with others, including constitutional law scholars and members of Congress, pressing for the same outcome.

What is telling about these briefs is how they bear the marks of the dark money machinery behind the climate lawfare campaign and help to remind us that this campaign is an ideological effort to end-run the ballot box in service of left-wing ideological dark money goals.

Start with a brief captioned “Preemption Scholars,” filed on behalf of six professors. The brief was signed by Hausfeld LLP and DiCello Levitt, classic trial lawyer firms that represent climate plaintiffs.

Four of the six signatory professors are member scholars of the Center for Progressive Reform, a leftwing advocacy shop funded by George Soros’s Open Society Foundation and the Tides Foundation, a major funder of Sher Edling. One of the four scholars, Daniel Farber, also serves as director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE), which has received grant funding from the Clean Break Fund, a group dedicated to promoting climate lawfare. Not coincidentally, CLEE member Dave Jones who leads the Center’s Climate Risk Initiative filed his own amicus brief.

Another brief, presenting the concerns of former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrators and senior career staff, contains a curious disclosure: its preparation was funded by the Clean Break Fund. And Clean Break appears again as a funder of EarthJustice, which serves as counsel on a brief filed by another professor, Georgetown Law’s William Buzbee.

Clean Break Fund lists among its grantees NYU Law’s State Energy & Environmental Impact Center. The center’s stated mission is to advance climate and “environmental justice” by placing NYU Law Fellows as special assistants in state attorneys general offices, going as far to pay the salaries of these state employees.

The center boasts that its fellows have been embedded in AG offices in the District of Columbia, Delaware, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, and Washington, among others. Nearly all of those offices also signed a brief supporting Boulder, and many have their own climate suits.

This story repeats further down the docket. Alan Morrison filed a brief describing his background as a constitutional law professor at George Washington University School of Law. Missing is Morrison’s role in founding the litigating arm of Public Citizen, a leftwing advocacy group that has urged prosecutors to charge energy companies with criminal homicide. Public Citizen, of course, filed its own brief and it shares funders, Open Society among them, with several other amici on this docket.

Perhaps the most absurd entry is a brief purporting to represent the views of “Colorado ranchers” concerned about climate change.  he first name on the brief is Kathryn Bedell, an activist affiliated with the Western Organization of Resource Councils, which is funded by the Tides Foundation and the New Venture Fund, another Sher Edling dark money funder. Deirdre Macnab, one of the other alleged ranchers, is a longtime solar energy activist and former president of the Florida League of Women Voters — whose parent group is likewise funded by Tides and Open Society.

But it gets better. Ninety Democratic members of Congress, led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, filed a hectoring brief. As a reminder, Whitehouse has taken campaign contributions from Sher Edling partners dating back to 2016. And who appeared as counsel for the members of Congress: the Ridgeline Center for Law and Policy, formerly the Center for Applied Environmental Law and Policy, itself a sponsored project of the New Venture Fund.

The deep roots of this network illustrate that no single state court will stop this campaign. The money trail shows more than three dozen lawsuits connecting back to the same handful of plaintiffs’ firms and massive dark money funders.

These cases are a concerted, ideological, well-funded effort to change American society.  And absent intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court, these cases will continue in friendly jurisdictions with the help of this highly sophisticated dark-money operation until enough billion-dollar judgements unlock the left’s dark money ideological dreams. That is not how we should be governing our nation.

The direction of our country, our economy and our national energy policy should not turn on state court judgments like this. And the Justices should say so in Suncor.

O.H. Skinner is the executive director of Alliance for Consumers and the former Solicitor General of Arizona. 

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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