SUNCOR Gets Complicated

Sarah Isgur and David French discuss the surprisingly complicated Suncor SCOTUS oral argument, Justice Samuel Alito and his AI usage, and circuit cases on child sex abuse material, vaccine exemptions, and racial harassment. The Agenda: –An appropriate use of AI by Justice Alito? –“I don’t think Justice Alito has DraftKings on his phone.” –Will Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition ever get overturned? Show Notes: Order Sarah’s book here. Advisory Opinions is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—click here. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member by clicking here. Sarah Isgur is a senior editor at The Dispatch and is based in northern Virginia. Prior to joining the company in 2019, she had worked in every branch of the federal government and on three presidential campaigns. She’s also an ABC News contributor and the New York Times bestselling author of Last Branch Standing, a deep dive into the inner workings of the Supreme Court. When Sarah is not hosting podcasts or writing newsletters, she’s probably sending uplifting stories about spiders to Jonah, who only pretends to love all animals. David French is a columnist for the New York Times. He’s a former senior editor of The Dispatch. He’s the author most recently of Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. The podcast transcription below was generated using artificial intelligence and may include occasional errors or misspellings. Music 0:00 [rattling] Ready? Music 0:02 I was born ready. [rock music playing] Sarah Isgur 0:19 Welcome to Advisory Opinions. I'm Sarah Isgur. That's David French. We have got a pod for you today, our first oral argument of OT 2026. It's the Suncor climate change case, and, um, that got complicated. W- we'll get the bottom line up front on who we think is coming out ahead in this case, but, eh, eh. Uh, we've also got more Alito book tour stuff. Turns out he's used AI. Zombie originalism, zombie slayer. The headlines this week in law world were very zombie-focused. And then we've got circuit cases, Seventh Circuit, Ninth Circuit, First Amendment abounds. Uh, we've got child sexual abuse material protected by the First Amendment. We've got vaccine exemption dissent about the First Amendment, actually Title VII, and a racial harassment case under the Equal Protection Clause coming out of the Ninth. All this and more on Advisory Opinions. Sarah Isgur 1:23 David, let's start out the podcast with our first oral argument of the year, OT 2026. This was the Suncor case. I have said that I think this is the biggest case of the year for me. Uh, this is Boulder, Colorado suing, uh, some energy companies. We have cases like this around the country, depends exactly what you count, but we're at several dozen now, whatever the number may be. Boulder's theory is state tort, nuisance, misleading advertisements, Sarah Isgur 1:54 you know, state law harm done by these producer companies. They're not emitters, they're producers, so they're getting the fossil fuels out of the ground, and they're saying that that has led to, through a chain of events, global climate change, and that that global climate change has caused injury to people who live in Boulder, Colorado. Just like any other tort, they can sue for that. Just disclosure real quick for those tuning into this podcast for the first time, or not since recently, uh, my husband now works for Chevron. Chevron is not a party to this case, but obviously that is also an energy producer. And like Justice Alito, who recused himself because his wife owned stock in different energy companies, same thing kind of applies here because this will have effects on other producer companies. But unlike Justice Alito, I'm not recusing myself. But I did want to mention [chuckles] that, you know, potential problem. So, David, Interactive transcripts are available to Premium members. Join to follow along with the audio. Join Now More We Think You’d Like