Chevron Prevails in US Supreme Court Wetlands Venue Fight (3)

The US Supreme Court sided with Chevron Corp. in a protracted fight over the proper venue for a lawsuit seeking to hold the oil and gas giant liable for the rapid erosion of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands.

The justices in an 8-0 decision on Friday ruled Chevron had plausibly alleged the conduct it’s accused of related to oil refining activities carried out on behalf of the federal government during World War II, and that it appeared sufficient to remove its case from state to federal court.

“This suit implicates acts by Chevron that are closely connected to the performance of its federal duties,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court.

The ruling reversed a decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and remanded it for further proceedings consistent with the opinion. Justice Samuel Alito didn’t participate arguments or the decision due to owning the stock of a company involved in the broader dispute.

The decision isn’t tied to the merits of the case, which stem from Chevron’s actions in Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish. But it could have important ramifications in a feud between Louisiana and the oil and gas industry that’s been mired in procedural disputes for 13 years.

Six Louisiana parishes, backed by the Republican-led state, in 2013 brought 42 lawsuits against firms such as Chevron and Exxon Mobil Corp. The suits claimed they violated a state law that required permits for certain oil production operations after 1980 and must pay for any damage they caused.

One case went to trial last year and ended in a jury verdict ordering Chevron to pay $745 million toward restoring the coastal region. Chevron denies that any of its activities are responsible for coastal land loss.

Lawyers for the parishes said before the the ruling that it could affect roughly a dozen matters, including the one that went to trial. Thomas noted the court’s decision didn’t resolve whether the defendants in any of the related cases can also satisfy the test Chevron met in this one.

Chevron spokesman Bill Turenne said the company “looks forward to litigating these cases in federal court, where they belong.”

But Victor Marcello, a lawyer for the parishes, said that it’s not clear how many cases now in state court will move to federal court because of the ruling. “It didn’t decide the ultimate issue of remand in any case,” he said.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill also expressed confidence the state’s claims would prevail no matter the venue.

“A jury in one of the most conservative, pro–oil and gas communities in the country found that Chevron was liable for billions of gallons of toxic waste dumped into the Louisiana marsh,” Murrilll said in a statement. “It doesn’t matter whether this case is in state court or federal court—I am confident the outcome will be the same.”

World War II Contracts

The question for the justices centered on a 2011 amendment to the Federal Officer Removal Statute, which requires federal courts to review actions “for or relating to” those undertaken under a federal officer.

Chevron pushed to move the lawsuits out of state court under the theory that its charged actions were tied to conduct dating to when it had World War II-era contracts to refine aviation gas for the military.

The justices agreed, finding at this stage a link between Chevron’s production and refining efforts on behalf of the war effort.

“Chevron has plausibly alleged a close relationship between its challenged crude-oil production and the performance of its federal avgas refining duties—not a tenuous, remote, or peripheral one—and has therefore satisfied the ‘relating to’ requirement of the federal officer removal statute,” Thomas wrote.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a concurring opinion that aligned with the judgment but opposed the ruling’s conclusion that the statute at issue “requires only an indirect relationship between the conduct targeted by the lawsuit and the asserted federal duties.”

The parishes and the Republican-led state argued that the cases dealt exclusively with oil production, and that it involved violations of state law that belonged in state court.

The Fifth Circuit previously rejected Chevron’s argument, because it failed to show its predecessors’ oil production in Louisiana was connected to its refining activities.

But writing for the court, Thomas said that decision placed far too many restrictions on the meaning of “relating to.”

He also dismissed the state of Louisiana’s arguments, saying it’s theory is that “this case should not turn on the meaning of ‘relating to’ at all.”

The case is Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, U.S., 24-813, 4/17/26.