WASHINGTON • The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a bid by ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy to scuttle a lawsuit brought by officials in Boulder that seeks to hold the oil companies liable for allegedly helping to fuel climate change in a case that could affect dozens of similar lawsuits around the country.

The justices on Monday took up an appeal by the companies of a lower court’s ruling that let the litigation move forward. The suit alleging state law violations by the companies seeks unspecified monetary damages for costs incurred by Boulder associated with mitigating climate impacts.

President Donald Trump’s administration is backing the appeal by the oil companies. 

The Boulder litigation is the latest chapter in efforts by numerous U.S. jurisdictions seeking damages from companies that extract, produce, distribute or sell fossil fuels.

Last year, the Colorado Supreme Court permitted Boulder County and the city of Boulder on Monday to proceed with their lawsuit against the two corporations.

The claims from Boulder County and the city of Boulder in Colorado court had implicated a variety of political and policy questions, including the executive and legislative branches’ prerogative to set energy policy and the slippery slope of permitting every municipal government to potentially seek money from private entities for climate-related disasters.

In the plaintiffs’ telling, ExxonMobil and Suncor knew for decades that the burning of fossil fuels and the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere would change the planet’s climate. Yet, the companies misrepresented or concealed their internal findings from the public, they alleged. As a result, Boulder County and the city of Boulder have had to spend money to address droughts, wildfires and other manifestations of extreme weather, they said.

The plaintiffs had brought the claims under the state’s common law — which refers the longstanding category of civil claims that does not originate with a specific statute. To them, the lawsuit was not about regulating emissions or altering federal policy, but to use the same tools as plaintiffs who are harmed by faulty products, for example.

On their side, the local governments wielded a 2023 decision of the Hawaii Supreme Court, finding the city of Honolulu’s similar state-law claims against Sunoco and other defendants could proceed. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review that decision.

Meanwhile, the defendants in the Boulder County case had leaned on a different decision out of the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In that lawsuit, where New York City sued ExxonMobil and other energy corporations, the Second Circuit ruled that the city would be “jeopardizing our nation’s foreign policy goals” by deploying state-level legal claims against longstanding national and international energy agreements.

 In the May 12 opinion Colorado Supreme Court opinion, Justice Richard L. Gabriel had rejected the defendants’ argument that the lawsuit seeking damages was, in essence, a backdoor method of regulating global greenhouse gas emissions.

“Moreover, accepting defendants’ argument that a large damages award is equivalent to regulation and thus must be preempted could lead to the preemption of many traditional state law (liability) claims simply because they might lead to a large damages award,” he wrote. “But a lawsuit does not amount to regulation merely because it might have an impact on how actors in a given field behave.”

Justice Carlos A. Samour Jr. dissented, arguing all local governments are now empowered to file their own lawsuits to recover the costs of addressing climate change. Such a result, he argued, is “regulatory chaos.”

“We are but one indivisible nation. Yet, the majority in this case gives Boulder, Colorado, the green light to act as its own republic,” Samour wrote for himself and Justice Brian D. Boatright.

Nearly 60 state and local governments have brought similar lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages, with more continuing to be filed, the companies told the Supreme Court in a filing.

The Trump administration has acted in various ways to bolster the companies’ positions. Last year, it launched two preemptive cases seeking to stop Hawaii and Michigan from filing climate-related lawsuits against oil companies that the administration said would imperil domestic energy production.

Reporter Michael Karlik contributed to this article.