Tennessee submitted an amicus brief opposing Colorado local governments that are attempting to use Colorado state law to control nationwide energy policy.
The Volunteer State filed the brief this week in the Supreme Court case Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County.
This case concerns Boulder County’s pursuit of billions of dollars in alleged climate-change damages from energy companies, including for greenhouse gas emissions they produce nationwide and for the sale of gasoline to different states.
“Horizontal federalism, the idea that each state governs itself in its own way, is a foundational part of our constitutional structure and a defining feature of America,” Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said. “Boulder’s claims in this case seek to put us all under the thumb of one city’s policy preferences and thereby undermine the notion of representative democracy at the heart of our Republic.”
In the brief, Skrmetti said the Constitution allows states to exercise “territorial sovereignty,” rather than “regulating within the borders of another.”
Skrmetti said the Supreme Court “should clarify as much and reject Colorado’s attempt to regulate emissions in other states.”
Before the 13 original colonies combined into America, they had the “right to self-government and territorial sovereignty,” Skrmetti said, adding that the Founding Fathers did not try “to change that.”
“They sought to strengthen the federal government’s authority to quell interstate disputes and conduct foreign relations,” he noted. “But the role of States as independent sovereigns remained the foundation of the new federalist system.”
Skrmetti said Colorado’s greenhouse gas emissions regulation “violates territorial sovereignty.”
“Fossil fuels power virtually all modern American life, and greenhouse gas emissions pose a complicated set of policy tradeoffs,” he said.
The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to permit the state’s policy to stand “allows Colorado state tort law to dictate energy policy in every State—all fifty of them,” according to Skrmetti.
“The Constitution does not grant Colorado that authority. Colorado’s attempt to regulate conduct throughout the country plainly violates the territorial sovereignty of its fellow States,” he noted.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at [email protected].
