Consumer Watchdog Alert Exposes Fossil Fuel Front Groups Backing Exxon, Suncor Before Supreme Court -- Follow the Money to Big Oil and Billionaire Paul Singer
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- A new Consumer Alert video from Consumer Watchdog exposes the fossil fuel money and billionaire investors behind organizations urging the U.S. Supreme Court to shield ExxonMobil and Suncor from lawsuits accusing the companies of deceiving the public about climate change.
The Consumer Alert draws from Consumer Watchdog's new investigation, A Field Guide to Fossil Fuel Front Groups: Coordinating a Supreme Court Campaign to Shield Big Oil, which found that 25 of the 38 organizations — 66% — that filed briefs supporting Exxon and Suncor have documented financial ties to fossil fuel defendants, the broader fossil fuel industry, or climate denial and dark-money networks.
The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments October 5 in Suncor Energy Inc. v. Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County. The case could determine whether communities across the country can use state laws to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for allegedly deceiving the public about climate change and shifting billions of dollars in climate costs onto taxpayers.
Explore the Interactive Fossil Fuel Front Group Field Guide
The Consumer Alert highlights two organizations that filed briefs supporting Exxon and Suncor: the Manhattan Institute and Landmark Legal Foundation.
The Alert says:
"Take the Manhattan Institute. It filed a brief supporting Exxon and Suncor. Its chairman emeritus and longtime major donor is billionaire Paul Singer.
"Why does that matter? Singer's Elliott Investment Management owns more than $1.58 billion in Suncor stock.
"And there's another connection. Justice Samuel Alito's wife leased family land to oil and gas producer Citizen Energy. Citizen was later acquired for more than $2 billion by a company majority-owned by Singer's Elliott Investment Management.
"Then there's the Landmark Legal Foundation. Its brief says no party or lawyer in the case financed or authored it.
"What it doesn't tell you is that Landmark has received ExxonMobil funding, including grants earmarked for 'environmental accountability,' and a longtime Exxon employee once served on its board. Supreme Court rules don't require that history to be disclosed."
The investigation found the same overlapping funding relationships throughout the network. ExxonMobil funded 11 organizations supporting the companies before the Court, entities connected to Singer are tied to nine, the Koch network to 16, and the Bradley Foundation to 16. Many organizations have connections to multiple funding networks at once.
The Consumer Alert concludes:
"These may look like dozens of independent voices supporting Exxon and Suncor.
"Follow the money, and you see something very different."
Explore Consumer Watchdog's interactive Fossil Fuel Front Group Field Guide at ConsumerWatchdog.org/fieldguide.
SOURCE Consumer Watchdog
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