Supreme Court Considers Constitutional Right To Pollute Free Of Charge
The Supreme Court opened its new term Monday by confronting America’s gravest constitutional emergency: local governments sending invoices to enormously profitable oil companies. In Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, the justices considered whether Colorado communities may pursue state-court lawsuits seeking billions of dollars from Suncor and ExxonMobil for alleged climate damage. The Trump administration backs the companies, correctly recognizing that requiring a corporation to absorb the costs of its business model would replace capitalism with the far more radical doctrine of paying for things.
President Donald Trump celebrated the case as a defense of innocent petroleum producers against aggressive weather. “Nobody has done more for the climate than oil companies, and now Boulder wants them to pay because rain fell too hard,” Trump said. “That is a terrible precedent. Soon restaurants will be blamed for food, banks for money, and casinos for people losing their houses.” The administration maintains that climate policy belongs to Congress, where it can be discussed responsibly for several decades before being postponed because an election is approaching.
Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues will also consider immigration detention, third-country deportations, AR-15 restrictions and Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship requirements. The court has thus assembled every argument Americans normally shout across Thanksgiving dinner and converted it into a constitutional docket. Its conservative majority will spend the coming months determining which rights are deeply rooted in the nation’s history, which rights appeared suspiciously recently, and which rights become irrelevant whenever compliance would inconvenience a major donor.
The term follows Trump’s criticism of his own Supreme Court appointees for occasionally displaying independence, a disorder traditionally associated with judges having jobs. The president expects the justices to recover and resume applying the Constitution according to its sacred original meaning: whatever benefits him at the moment, preferably retroactive to breakfast. Ordinary Americans need not worry about undue influence because most cannot afford Supreme Court litigation, ensuring that constitutional interpretation remains accessible mainly to corporations, ideological foundations and billionaires with urgent feelings. Under American law, creating a public cost is how a corporation proves it owes the public nothing.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.