The U.S. Supreme Court on April 17 sided unanimously with oil company Chevron, ruling that a pollution lawsuit in Louisiana should be heard in federal court.
The court’s 8–0 opinion in Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish was authored by Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice Samuel Alito previously recused himself from the case, citing a financial conflict of interest.
Louisiana localities alleged that the state’s wetlands were damaged, dating back to when oil production activities were carried out to honor federal refinery contracts during World War II.
Starting in 2013, six parishes along the Gulf of America coastline in Louisiana initiated 42 lawsuits accusing oil and gas companies of violating a state permitting law, the State and Local Coastal Resources Management Act of 1978.
The first case went to trial, and in April 2025, a jury ordered Chevron to pay $744.6 million to Plaquemines Parish.
The oral argument on Jan. 12 did not center on the merits of the localities’ lawsuits, but instead focused on the narrow, technical issue of whether procedural rules governing jurisdiction—or authority to hear a case—were followed by lower courts.
Some companies prefer to litigate in federal court, which they consider more amenable to companies than state courts.
When a case is transferred from a state court to a federal court, lawyers describe the process as “removal” to federal court.
The Trump administration argued in favor of Chevron’s position at the Supreme Court.
Thomas wrote in the new opinion that Congress long ago authorized federal officers and their agents to remove lawsuits brought against them in state court to federal court.
The federal officer removal statute states that an officer or a “person acting under that officer” may remove state lawsuits “for or relating to any act under color of such office.”
Here, Chevron cited the statute in its bid to remove a lawsuit alleging it caused environmental damage to Louisiana’s coast from the Louisiana state court to the federal court, Thomas said.
Chevron had argued that the suit was removable because it was related to the company’s crude oil production during World War II, when it refined oil into aviation gasoline for the military, according to the 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 said.
Because no party disputed that Chevron was acting under federal officers’ authority when it refined the oil, the Supreme Court needed only to decide whether this suit, which concerns the wartime production of crude oil, “relates to” Chevron’s war-era aviation fuel refining for the military, the opinion said.
“We hold that it does,” Thomas added.
The Supreme Court reversed a contrary ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and sent the case back to that court “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson filed an opinion concurring in the end result, but not in the reasoning behind the Supreme Court’s opinion.
Jackson said the “indirect relationship between the conduct targeted by the lawsuit and the asserted federal duties” was not enough.
The federal officer removal statute requires that there be a cause-and-effect relationship between conduct and duties, a test that Chevron met in the case, she said.
American Energy Institute CEO Jason Isaac hailed the new ruling, saying it makes clear that “companies supporting national priorities, like fueling the military in wartime, cannot be second-guessed decades later in state courts.”
He told The Epoch Times that the ruling was “a critical step toward restoring sanity in our legal system and stopping the endless wave of politically motivated lawsuits designed to punish the very industry that powers our economy and national security.”
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill reacted to the new decision.
“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,” Murrill told The Epoch Times.
“It doesn’t matter whether this case is in state court or federal court—I am confident the outcome will be the same,” she said.
The Epoch Times reached out to Chevron’s attorneys for comment. No reply was received by publication time.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared April 17, 2026, in The Epoch Times.