Delaware v. BP America Inc.

The clerk of the federal district court in Delaware took action to return Delaware’s case to Delaware Superior Court.

The federal district court for the District of Delaware granted fossil fuel industry defendants’ motion to stay execution of the court’s January 5 order remanding the State of Delaware’s climate change case to state court. The court stayed the remand order until the Third Circuit issues its ruling on the defendants’ appeal. The court agreed with the defendants that removal jurisdiction issues for climate change-related state law claims left “reasonable room for disagreement” and noted that each of the defendants’ removal grounds raised an issue of first impression for the Third Circuit. The court therefore found the defendants had made “the necessary showing of a likelihood of success on the merits.” The court also found that the defendants demonstrated they would likely suffer irreparable harm because “there may be no practical way to ‘un-ring the bell’ of the state court’s intervening rulings if the Third Circuit ultimately determines that the case should proceed in federal court.” In addition, the court found that a stay pending appeal would not substantially harm Delaware and would serve the public interests of judicial economy and conservation of public resources.

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On July 28, 2025, the State of Delaware filed an amended complaint in its lawsuit seeking to impose liability on fossil fuel industry defendants for climate change-related harms in Delaware attributable to the defendants’ “successful climate deception campaign.” The amended complaint added allegations regarding the defendants’ contacts with the State as well as new allegations about the defendants’ knowledge of the climate change risks posed by their products and their alleged concealment of those harms from the public, including allegations of more recent greenwashing campaigns. The amended complaint also included additional allegations regarding harmful climate change impacts in Delaware. The complaint added new allegations to its existing causes of action for negligence, trespass, nuisance, and violation of the Delaware Consumer Fraud Act, as well as a new cause of action for civil conspiracy.

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On May 15, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court denied fossil fuel companies’ petition for writ of certiorari seeking review of a Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision affirming remand orders in climate change cases brought against the companies by the City of Hoboken and the State of Delaware. Justice Alito did not take part in the consideration or decision of the petition. The petition presented the question of “[w]hether a federal district court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 over nominally state-law claims seeking redress for injuries allegedly caused by the effect of transboundary greenhouse gas emissions on the global climate, on the ground that federal law necessarily and exclusively governs such claims.”

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On October 12, 2022, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied fossil fuel industry defendants’ request that it stay issuance of the mandates after the court affirmed district court orders remanding climate change cases brought by the City of Hoboken and the State of Delaware to state court. The defendants had argued that issuance of the mandates should be stayed to allow the filing and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court.

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In a letter to the Third Circuit in support of its motion to stay the mandates in the City of Hoboken’s and State of Delaware’s cases, the defendants argued that the Supreme Court’s invitation to the Solicitor General to submit the U.S.'s views on the certiorari petition in the Boulder case made clear that these jurisdictional questions were “substantial.” The defendants cited an article that found that certiorari petitions were more than 46 times more likely to be granted once the Court sought the Solicitor General’s views. The defendants also cited the position the United States had previously taken in amicus briefs in Baltimore’s case and the Oakland/San Francisco case that the plaintiffs’ climate change claims were “inherently and necessarily federal in nature.”