Ruling just days after the Fourth Circuit held that Baltimore's lawsuit against Big Oil should return to state court, the Ninth Circuit similarly held that lawsuits brought by three California counties and one city belong in state court. CCL filed an amicus brief in the case supporting that result on behalf of U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

      The ruling rejected various claims the oil companies' made that the lawsuit, framed in state law terms, actually asserted various federal causes of action that should be heard in federal court. In joining the Fourth Circuit and a prior similar ruling by the Tenth Circuit, the federal appellate court based in California agreed with its sister circuits that none of the claimed federal causes of action applied. 

       The amicus brief filed by CCL argued that the defendants' claims of federal jurisdiction were invalid, in part, because they had heavily and successfully lobbied against federal laws that might apply to climate change.

        The Baltimore case had returned to the Fourth Circuit after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that the court had failed to address all the bases for federal jurisdiction asserted by Big Oil, based on its faulty understanding of a law that permitted interlocutory appeals of all bases for a remand order. The defendants are expected to seek further review in the Supreme Court of the new orders from various federal courts of appeals.