The Supreme Court has delivered a major blow to climate lawfare warriors who were using state courts to seek near-billion-dollar settlements against oil companies for activities decades ago to help the country win World War II.
In a unanimous 8-0 ruling earlier this month, the Court effectively struck down lawsuits against Chevron and other oil companies. (Justice Samuel Alito recused himself from the case, most likely because he owns stock in ConocoPhillips).
The seemingly obscure case, titled Chevron USA v. Plaquemines Parish, nonetheless had major implications for the entire American economy and the future of public-private partnerships.
The saga began all the way back in 2013 when several Louisiana municipalities, called parishes, filed suit against Chevron and other oil companies in state court. The plaintiffs alleged that the companies’ exploration, production, and related oil-producing activities during World War II in coastal zones damaged wetlands and waterways. The parishes sought monetary compensation for the alleged harm, as AMAC Newsline previously reported.
But the companies were not extracting oil just for profit. Rather, they answered the call by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to produce much needed aviation fuel, called avgas, from Louisiana oil wells.
Changes in state law, specifically in 1980 and 2018, paved the way for unscrupulous trial attorneys to weaponize state courts against the oil companies. They successfully won lawsuits totaling more than $740 million.
But that gravy train is now likely to end, as the justices agreed that lawsuits against the companies belong in federal, not state court under a concept known as “federal officer removal.”
Under an 1812 law, federal courts have the power to hear state court cases filed against “any officer (or any person acting under that officer) or the United States or any agency thereof, in an official or individual capacity, for or relating to any act under color of such office.” In other words, lawsuits against federal officials and contractors – like oil companies producing avgas for the U.S. military – must be heard in federal courts.
The purpose of this statute is to prevent state courts that are hostile to certain federal activities from bogging down those activities in endless litigation. The law has been upheld for more than two centuries for good reason – to preserve the principle of federalism and the supremacy of federal law.
The climate activists suing Chevron had claimed that it is liable for alleged environmental damage caused by their practices during World War II – even though the company followed federal law and best practices at the time.
For example, an “expert report” paid for by the activists criticized Chevron for using earthen pits during the extraction process, instead of steel pits. Steel pits are considered stronger and less likely to leak than earthen pits, so they are more environmentally friendly. But as most students of history know, the federal government rationed steel during World War II.
In other words, those suing Chevron effectively wanted the company punished for following the law.
“The Government emphasized the importance of increasing Chevron’s crude-oil production to support avgas refining as part of the war effort, and it identified the oil field at issue as critical to the war program because it produced a preferential kind of crude oil for refining avgas,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion.
“In this all-hands-on-deck, wartime context, Chevron needed to produce more crude oil as quickly as possible to facilitate more avgas refining, including its own,” Thomas continued. That included using canals, instead of constructing new roads, to transport the oil – another activity that the plaintiffs sued over.
As Thomas’s opinion made clear, Chevron worked diligently and within the confines of the technology and resources at the time to ramp up production to help the country win the war.
Attorneys for Louisiana also argued that even if Chevron acted on behalf of the federal government, the lawsuits against the company were for crude oil production, not avgas, even though that is derived from crude oil. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Chevron and said that even if it was contracted to produce avgas by the federal government, the crude oil drilling was not “for or relating to” its activities.
But this argument failed to even sway far-left liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who wrote a concurring opinion.
“Chevron used much of the crude oil it pumped from its Louisiana oil fields to refine into avgas during the war,” Justice Brown explained. “This was no accident, as the crude oil from Chevron’s Louisiana fields was particularly well-suited for refining into avgas, and the Federal Government pushed its refiners, including Chevron, to produce more and more avgas.”
A ruling the other way would only open the floodgates to lawsuits by the greedy trial attorneys, as the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board opined.
Even today, the federal government “enlists businesses” to help with “immigration enforcement, cyber-security and critical mineral mining.” Those critical operations, which can often be performed more efficiently and at a lower cost by private companies, would be hard to obtain if anyone could sue under a plaintiff-friendly state law.
“Businesses would likely be less willing to help the government if they can later be shaken down by plaintiff attorneys and politicians in biased state courts,” the Editorial Board wrote on the day of the decision. “The Court’s decision will prevent trial attorneys from raiding businesses because they serve their country.”
Climate activists were hoping for a big victory so they could continue to seek billions of dollars in damages from any company that may have violated current regulations years or even decades in the past when those regulations may not have even existed. This latest Supreme Court decision stops the legal racketeering dead in its tracks while upholding common sense and the rule of law.
Matt Lamb is an AMAC Newsline contributor and associate editor for The College Fix. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA. He previously interned for Open the Books. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, The Federalist, LifeSiteNews, Human Life Review, Headline USA, and other outlets. The opinions expressed are his own. Follow him @mattlamb22 on X.
