Climate Litigation

324 posts

Supreme Court building

Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Fossil Fuel Companies’ Appeal in Boulder Climate Case but Asks for Briefing on Threshold Jurisdiction Questions

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court granted three fossil fuel companies’ petition for a writ of certiorari seeking review of the Colorado Supreme Court’s opinion allowing the County Commissioners of Boulder County and the City of Boulder (together, Boulder) to proceed with their state-law claims that the companies are liable for […]

Data Center Litigation – An Emerging Frontier for Climate Litigation?

The explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and digital services has brought renewed attention to the physical infrastructure underpinning the digital economy: data centers. While critical to the operations of major tech companies, data centers are now among the most energy-intensive forms of industrial infrastructure. Although it is […]

The ECtHR’s Climate Jurisprudence in 2025: Grappling with Fossil Fuels, Rejecting Extraterritorial Jurisdiction, and Still no Victim Status

A Year of Climate Rulings Handing down no less than five climate rulings in 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (“the ECtHR”) has been busy deciding the backlog of cases it had adjourned in 2023, while it dealt with three other climate cases pending before the Grand Chamber at […]

Sabin Center Submits Amicus Brief to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights

  On Monday, February 9, 2026, the Sabin Center submitted an amicus curiae brief to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Court) in the matter of the Request for an Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States with Respect to the Climate Change Crisis. The brief explains […]

Amazon Protects: Phase 4 of the Public Prosecutors Project to Fight Deforestation in Brazil

The Amazon Rainforest is the largest tropical forest on the planet, covering an area of approximately 6.3 million square kilometers and extending across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, and the Guianas. Half of the planet’s biodiversity is contained within it. Its vegetation is indispensable for maintaining the global rainfall […]

Sabin Center Report Surveys the Climate Litigation Landscape in 2025

Last week the Sabin Center published a report that looks back on climate litigation developments in 2025. This third installment in our year-end series provides a snapshot of how the field of climate litigation has evolved over the course of this year. The report also revisits significant rulings from around […]

Greenwashing on Trial: The Paris Tribunal Finds TotalEnergies Misled Consumers with Its Carbon Neutrality Claims

Introduction On October 23, 2025, the Judicial Tribunal of Paris (Tribunal judiciaire de Paris) found in Greenpeace France and Others v. TotalEnergies SE and TotalEnergies Electricité et Gaz France that TotalEnergies and its French subsidiary engaged in misleading environmental advertising. For the first time, a court has held a major […]

Looking Back at U.S. Climate Litigation During the Biden Years—and Some Thoughts on Emerging Trends During the Second Trump Administration

Today the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law published a report analyzing climate change lawsuits filed in United States courts while President Joseph R. Biden was in office. During the Biden administration, the federal government reversed course on the first Trump administration’s climate deregulation and embarked on a “whole-of-government approach […]