Justice Samuel Alito will no longer hear a major climate lawsuit against ExxonMobil and Suncor after previously rejecting calls to recuse over energy stocks.

Conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has determined he will not continue to take part in a high-stakes climate damages case involving ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy, a letter to the parties disclosed this week with no reason attached.

NBC News reported that the Monday letter went to lawyers in the dispute, which stems from a Colorado lawsuit by the city and county of Boulder seeking damages from oil companies over climate impacts. The case is set for argument next week. Left-leaning groups had pressed Alito to step aside over his energy-sector stock holdings, even though he does not own shares in the two companies before the Court.

The move marks a clear break from Alito’s earlier position. In May, a Court spokeswoman told reporters he had no financial interest in any party to the case and that the Court’s legal counsel advised his recusal was not required. He had also been described as having “inadvertently recused” in an earlier stage of the Colorado litigation.

Now he is out. That shift raises the chance of a 4-4 split on a Court that otherwise holds a 6-3 conservative majority, which could leave core legal questions unresolved and keep similar suits alive in state courts nationwide.

Clerk’s letter gives no explanation for the exit

Reuters reported the matter is scheduled for hearing on October 5, and that Court clerk Scott Harris informed the parties of the decision without offering a rationale.

Harris wrote to counsel in direct terms.

Clerk of the Supreme Court Scott Harris stated:

"I am writing to inform the parties that Justice Alito has determined that he will not continue to participate in this case."

The same notice language appears in other coverage of the filing. Alito owns stock in oil and gas companies that include ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, but not in ExxonMobil or Suncor, the defendants seeking to throw out Boulder’s suit.

Breitbart reported that Alito holds stocks in about two dozen energy companies that could feel effects from a broad ruling, and that the clerk’s letter arrived later in the proceedings than a typical recusal notice.

Financial disclosure details summarized in the coverage show holdings in ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, and additional energy-sector firms. Activists argued those companies could benefit if the Court shut down the Colorado-style cases. Company shareholder disclosures had warned of climate lawsuit risks, a point Consumer Watchdog highlighted earlier this month.

Activists cheered a decision they long demanded

Consumer Watchdog organizing director Alexandra Nagy praised the outcome and framed it as overdue.

Alexandra Nagy said:

"Justice Alito’s recusal... is the right decision, and one he should have made from the start,"

Left-leaning groups had repeatedly called for Alito to leave the case. Their theory ran through the knock-on effects: a ruling that blocked Boulder’s suit could also curb parallel actions against other energy firms across the country. The oil and gas industry, for its part, has hoped the Court would deliver a broad decision preventing those state-court cases from moving forward and potentially sparing firms from billions in damages claims.

With Alito sidelined, that path grows narrower. An even split would leave the lower-court result in place and the larger legal fight unsettled. Readers who follow the Court’s recent emergency and merits docket fights, including Jackson’s critique of the emergency docket, already know how quickly process fights become leverage fights.

The Colorado case is not Alito’s first encounter with this litigation cluster. In 2023, he recused when the Supreme Court turned away an appeal from the companies in the Boulder matter. On the same day, the Court rejected appeals in similar cases involving other companies, including ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, and Alito did not participate in those either.

Earlier guidance said no recusal was required

The May statement from the Court spokeswoman drew a hard line. She said Alito does not have a financial interest in any party involved, and that he had been advised by the Court’s legal counsel that “his recusal is not required.” The prior message to NBC News was that there was no need for him to step aside from the current case.

That official guidance did not stop the pressure campaign. Recusal fights have become a standard tool when high-profile cases land at the Court, a pattern familiar from other recent clashes such as the bitter birthright citizenship exchange among the justices.

Some conservatives, meanwhile, pointed at Justice Elena Kagan over a climate change chapter in a reference manual for judges. Kagan wrote a brief foreword to the manual and recently told lawmakers she never read the chapter in question. The selective intensity of the Alito campaign stands in contrast to how quickly that Kagan controversy moved off center stage.

Supreme Court practice leaves recusal decisions largely to each justice. The letter in this case offered no public window into Alito’s thinking beyond the bare determination that he will not continue to participate. A Court spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for further comment when the news broke.

Deadlock risk hangs over industry-wide stakes

Boulder’s suit is one front in a wider wave of state and local cases that try to pin climate-related costs on energy producers in state court. ExxonMobil and Suncor came to the Supreme Court seeking to end that Colorado action. A decisive ruling for the companies could have reset the field. A 4-4 result does the opposite: it resolves little and invites more of the same litigation strategy.

That is the practical consequence of losing one vote from the conservative side of the bench on a case built for national impact. Other recent Court orders have shown how quickly a single justice’s posture can shape enforcement and policy fights, including when the Court cleared expanded voter citizenship checks and when administration lawyers pledged to follow tight instructions from the justices.

The same docket has also featured sharp divisions over executive power and economic policy, as when Kavanaugh’s dissent sketched a tariff roadmap after a setback. Alito’s absence from the climate argument fits that larger picture of a Court constantly pulled into partisan pressure campaigns dressed up as ethics disputes.

Case records identify the matter as No. 25-170. The operative public notice remains the clerk’s short letter. No fuller explanation has been released. The parties now head into argument without him.

Coverage of other Court-adjacent compliance fights, such as the response to the order blocking USPS mail ballot rules, underscores how closely lawyers and agencies watch every signal from One First Street. This recusal is another such signal, delivered without elaboration.

Pressure campaigns that treat conservative justices’ lawful holdings as disqualifying, while softer questions about liberal justices fade, turn recusal into a tactical weapon. A full Court deciding major national questions beats a depleted bench that leaves the hardest issues hanging.