A handful of California cities and counties want billions of dollars from the oil industry for the problems arising from climate change, and their far-reaching legal push is about to face a crucial test in a Pasadena courtroom.

On Wednesday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments from three counties and five cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, on why their lawsuits against several oil companies should proceed in state court rather than federal court. The widely watched challenges are thought to have better odds in state court.

The eight California communities behind the suits are at the forefront of a small but growing effort nationwide to hold oil companies financially responsible for rising seas, wildfires and other climate-related havoc. The new legal tactic, now being employed by New York, Baltimore and other cities and counties, comes as global warming has become a low priority during the Trump administration.

The decision on which court should settle the suits will directly affect only the California municipalities. In addition to San Francisco and Oakland, they include Richmond, Santa Cruz and Imperial Beach (San Diego County), and Marin, San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties.

However, the rulings in Pasadena also feed into a national debate over court jurisdiction on the matter, which legal experts say may ultimately prompt the Supreme Court to weigh in on the climate issue.

The decisions could also influence additional local and state governments in deciding to seek damages from oil companies. Already 13 challenges have been waged across the country, cumulatively seeking tens of billions of dollars from the likes of Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and BP.

“What the Ninth Circuit does is important,” said Ann Carlson, professor of environmental law and faculty co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change at UCLA. “There are a number of municipalities out there that may be waiting to see what happens here. If the plaintiffs start to pile up victories, this could embolden other cities, counties and states to file their own suits.”

The stakes are nothing short of who pays for the biggest existential crisis of the day.

The California plaintiffs are hoping to win a nod from the appellate judges that their legal case belongs in state court. While each of the lawsuits is slightly different, they all make the novel argument that oil companies, by selling fossil fuel products that contribute to global warming, constitute a public nuisance under state law.

Accordingly, the new lawsuits argue that state courts are equipped to award nuisance damages as they routinely do in a tort dispute. The California suits bolster their case with the claim that the oil companies knew their products were causing climate problems but concealed the science. It’s akin, they say, to how the tobacco industry sold cigarettes while hiding the harmful health effects of smoking.

“California’s state courts have always handled disputes over who should pay when somebody knowingly harms someone else. They do it all the time,” said San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera in an email to The Chronicle. “Our lawsuit applies well-established California public nuisance law to ensure the climate change-related costs we’re facing are paid by the fossil fuel companies who knowingly caused the harm in the first place.”

Conversely, the oil industry wants the lawsuits tried in federal court, where there is precedent for federal environmental laws to preempt nuisance claims. As long as the companies adhere to regulations like the Clean Air Act, the reasoning goes, the businesses shouldn’t be sued for damages.

“At the end of the day this really isn’t a liability issue,” said Phil Goldberg, special counsel to the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, a part of the trade group National Association of Manufacturers. “These energy companies shouldn’t be liable for selling oil and gas and other energy products that we need every day.”

Two federal judges have already thrown out some of the climate lawsuits, including San Francisco Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court of Northern California. After determining that federal court was better suited to settling the issue than state court, he ruled in 2018 that the issue of climate was not a matter for the courts at all but for the executive and legislative branches of government.

Alsup dismissed the lawsuits filed by San Francisco and Oakland, a decision that the two cities are now appealing before the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Other federal judges, however, have ruled differently. Four have determined that state courts are the appropriate place for the climate cases, including Judge Vince Chhabria, also of the U.S. District Court of Northern California.

In contrast to Alsup, Chhabria supported bids by Marin, San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties as well as the cities of Richmond, Santa Cruz and Imperial Beach to pursue their cases in front of state judges. The oil industry is now appealing the move before the Ninth Circuit Court.

On Wednesday, a Ninth Circuit Court panel is scheduled to first take up the appeal of Chhabria’s decision and then consider the appeal of Alsup’s decision. Rulings are not expected until sometime later this year.

“It’s quite possible that the decisions reached in these cases may ripple beyond the Ninth Court to other parts of the country,” said Richard Frank, director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center at UC Davis.

While the Ninth Circuit Court’s decision is not binding outside of the region, Frank said it could influence the rulings of at least three other appellate courts that have begun taking up similar jurisdictional issues on the climate cases, or soon will be.

Attorneys for the oil industry have already petitioned for the Supreme Court to intervene. Specifically, they asked the justices to put the brakes on cases in state court until the appellate courts rule on whether federal court is the more appropriate venue. The high court declined to take up the issue.

But legal experts say it may be only a matter of time before the Supreme Court gets involved.

Carlson, who has consulted for some of the plaintiffs, said the high court could be asked to sort out conflicting decisions by the appellate courts over jurisdiction as well as the issue of whether the lawsuits should be thrown out.

“If you got two circuit courts coming out differently, one saying, ‘No, you don’t dismiss the case’ and another circuit court saying, “Yes, we dismiss this case,” then maybe you see the Supreme Court decision,” she said. “Again, this is all speculation and hard to predict.”

“This is just the first salvo now,” Carlson added. “There will be many more moves.”

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander