Tennessee Attorney General Defends Federalism and State Territorial Sovereignty at the U.S. Supreme Court
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti today announced that Tennessee has filed an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court challenging an effort by Colorado local governments to wield Colorado state tort law to control energy policy nationwide.
In the case, Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, the County of Boulder seeks billions of dollars in damages from energy companies for alleged “climate change harms” caused by greenhouse gas emissions across the country, including the sale of gasoline in other states. This raises significant constitutional questions about the authority of a single state to regulate conduct occurring entirely in other states.
In the brief, Tennessee argues that the Constitution protects each state’s territorial sovereignty and prohibits one state from imposing its policy preferences beyond its own borders. Tennessee warns that allowing Boulder’s lawsuit to proceed would permit individual states to effectively dictate national energy and environmental policy for the entire country.
“The States became sovereign authorities on July 4, 1776, and after ratification they retained the full scope of that authority except for what they explicitly surrendered in the Constitution,” said Attorney General Skrmetti. “Horizontal federalism, the idea that each State governs itself in its own way, is a foundational part of our constitutional structure and a defining feature of America. Boulder’s claims in this case seek to put us all under the thumb of one city’s policy preferences and thereby undermine the notion of representative democracy at the heart of our Republic.”
The brief explains that the states entered the Union as sovereign entities and retained broad authority over matters within their own borders. While the Constitution grants certain limited powers to the federal government, it does not authorize states to exercise regulatory power over their sister states. Matters involving interstate emissions and national energy policy are reserved to the federal government—not individual states acting alone.
The filing urges the Supreme Court to reaffirm these longstanding constitutional principles of territorial sovereignty and horizontal federalism.
The case is currently pending before the United States Supreme Court.