Maryland's Supreme Court on Tuesday slammed the brakes on high-profile climate lawsuits filed by Baltimore, the City of Annapolis, and Anne Arundel County against more than two dozen oil and gas companies, ruling that the local governments' claims are displaced by federal law and often fail under Maryland law. Justice Brynja Booth wrote the opinion, which leaves no room for the cities and county to use the state tort doctrine to police worldwide greenhouse-gas emissions. The decision lands just as similar fights move toward the U.S. Supreme Court, turning what started as local battles into a national legal showdown over where climate harms can be litigated.
The 165-page opinion, filed March 24, is posted on the Maryland Judiciary website. According to the Maryland Judiciary, the cases were consolidated after oral argument on Oct. 6, 2025, and the high court affirmed the circuit courts that had granted the defendants' motions to dismiss.
Justice Booth wrote that the local governments "are seeking to regulate air emissions beyond their jurisdictional boundaries," and the court concluded that the Clean Air Act and federal common law displace the broad state-law theories that would reach conduct across the globe. The opinion adds that even if federal preemption did not control, Baltimore, Annapolis, and Anne Arundel County failed to state viable claims for public nuisance, private nuisance, trespass, and failure-to-warn under Maryland law. According to the Maryland Judiciary, that combination leaves no path forward for the complaints as they are currently pleaded.
How the Justices Split
Chief Justice Matthew Fader and Justice Steven Gould each wrote concurring opinions, while Justices Shirley Watts and Peter Killough filed separate writings to concur in part and dissent in part, signaling that not everyone on the bench agreed on how far federal law should crowd out state claims. As reported by Maryland Daily Record, the court took particular aim at the idea that local tort law can be stretched to govern emissions decisions made over decades, by multiple actors, in multiple countries.
Why It Matters
The ruling reinforces a growing trend in which courts push back when cities and counties try to use state common law to assign the bill for global greenhouse-gas emissions to a relatively small group of fossil-fuel producers. The U.S. Supreme Court has already agreed to hear a similar preemption question in the Boulder climate case, and Columbia Law School's Climate Law Blog has explained how that certiorari grant could determine whether federal law cuts off state-law damages claims altogether, per Columbia Law Blog.
What Comes Next
With the Maryland decision now on the books, legal watchers expect that some actions in other states will slow down while the U.S. Supreme Court sorts out the broader preemption issue in Boulder. The Sabin Center's climate litigation tracking notes that courts and parties may seek stays or put discovery on hold until the justices speak, which could stall multiple climate damages suits for months or longer; see Sabin Center.
Local Claims and Costs
Baltimore's lawsuit, filed in 2018, accused 26 companies of hiding or downplaying the dangers of fossil fuels and asked for money to help pay for shoreline protections and other climate adaptation projects. Annapolis and Anne Arundel County followed with similar complaints in 2021. The factual allegations about alleged deception and local damage remain in the record, but the high court said those stories do not translate into cognizable causes of action under Maryland nuisance, trespass, or failure-to-warn doctrines. As reported by the Maryland Daily Record, Baltimore was the 13th municipality in the country to file this type of climate damages case.
For Maryland officials and residents, the decision shuts off one potential route for shifting adaptation costs to fossil-fuel companies and pushes the broader fight over who pays for climate harms toward Congress and federal regulators. Lawyers for both the local governments and the companies are now left to game out the next steps while the national litigation chessboard keeps shifting.
