The Supreme Court on Monday left in place a roughly $100 million class-action judgment against oil company Sunoco, declining to hear the company's appeal in Sunoco Inc. v. Cline — a decision that put Justice Brett Kavanaugh in an unusual position, publicly at odds with his conservative colleagues.

Kavanaugh was the only justice to state publicly that he would have taken up the case, according to the court's short order. Justice Samuel Alito did not take part in the decision, and the court offered no reason for his recusal — at the Supreme Court, justices decide recusals on their own and are not required to explain them. Newsweek reported that Alito holds a financial interest in Sunoco's competitors.

The dispute arose from allegations that Sunoco failed to pay the interest when payments to the owners of oil wells in Oklahoma were delayed. Those claims later developed into a class action — a mechanism that allows large groups of people with similar claims to sue together as one party — involving tens of thousands of holders of royalties and interest.

Sunoco contended that the class was far too broad and that many of the individuals covered by the ruling had never been identified or proven to have suffered an injury that would entitle them to sue. The federal appeals court rejected those arguments and maintained the judgment. By declining to consider Sunoco's appeal, the Supreme Court allowed the ruling to stand. A refusal to hear a case is not a ruling on its merits: review is granted only when at least four of the nine justices vote for it, so Monday's order left the lower-court judgment intact without the high court expressing any view on it.

By supporting the company's plea for another hearing, Kavanaugh took a position clearly at odds with that of the other members of the court. The development came on the same day that Kavanaugh showed sympathy for major energy companies in a separate case involving Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil.

That disagreement centers on lawsuits initiated by local governments in Colorado against oil companies seeking damages for harm caused by climate change. The companies contend that interstate pollution is essentially a matter for the federal government and cannot be dealt with through individual state-law claims — a federalism question whose resolution will determine whether the Colorado suits can move forward under state law.

While giving oral arguments in the case, Kavanaugh referred to a series of earlier Supreme Court rulings that he said strongly supported the companies' position.

“As I read them together, [these precedents] make crystal clear that interstate air and water pollution are matters for federal law unless Congress specifically preserves state law,” Kavanaugh said. “That is through and through those four cases.”

The two matters involve different companies and legal issues, even though they share similar names: Sunoco and Suncor. Yet Monday offered a rare opportunity to see Kavanaugh's individual position on a court where the six-member conservative majority usually acts in unison. In the Sunoco dispute, Kavanaugh was prepared to give the company another hearing while none of his colleagues publicly supported him. The Colorado climate cases, argued the same day, had not been decided as of Monday, leaving a ruling — and a fuller picture of where the justices stand on the questions Kavanaugh emphasized — for a later date.