On 24 October 2019, Maura Healey, the attorney general of Massachusetts, sued ExxonMobil for “deceptive advertising” and for “misleading Massachusetts investors about the risks to Exxon’s business posed by fossil fuel-driven climate change”. It was the culmination of an investigation Healey had launched in 2016 looking into how Exxon allegedly misled the public about climate, decades after its own scientists had briefed the company on the realities of the issue.
This week, the Massachusetts supreme court is hearing arguments related to that case – but not about Exxon’s actions decades earlier. Instead, the oil company wants the courts to decide whether Healey violated its first amendment rights by bringing the suit in the first place.
