3 high court chief justices recommended for elevation to Supreme Court

In a 2016 opinion penned just before Neil Gorsuch joined the Supreme Court, the future justice cautioned against attorneys coaxing judges into reaching conclusions unsupported by the Constitution's text. He emphasized that their role is to interpret the Constitution, not to project hopes and dreams onto the document. This cautionary voice might have foreseen the case before him now in Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County.

Boulder, Colorado, officials filed a lawsuit against oil giants Exxon Mobil and Suncor, which operates refineries in the state. They sought to compel the companies to share costs of climate change-related taxpayer burdens. This case, set to be heard by the Supreme Court on October 5, is significant as it could be the first of many lawsuits ordering oil companies to compensate for climate change costs.

However, the stakes are heightened due to the audacity of the oil companies' argument to the justices. They claim immunity from the suit not due to any specific constitutional provision, but because state courts cannot hear climate change lawsuits under the "structure of the Constitution."

The oil companies argue there's a hidden rule against many state environmental suits within the Constitution's structure, despite it being absent in the text. This argument exists far removed from the Supreme Court's precedents that allow state courts to hear lawsuits alleging a company caused pollution that migrated across boundaries.

But the bigger issue is the justices' commitment to textualism, which Gorsuch espoused. If applied, Suncor should be a straightforward case as the oil companies failed to present any argument rooted in the constitutional text. However, it's clear they intend to challenge the justices' textualism and originalism, known as the "structure of the Constitution."