Justice Thomas Delivers a Straight-Talking Victory Over the Climate Lobby’s Litigation Machine

On Friday, the Supreme Court handed down an important and unanimous 8–0 ruling in Chevron USA v. Plaquemines Parish holding that Chevron properly invoked the federal officer removal statute to transfer an environmental suit from Louisiana state court to federal court. Justice Thomas wrote for the Court.

I previously noted how this seemingly technical procedural case bears significant consequences for the relationship between federal and state courts and for the climate lobby’s ongoing litigation warfare against energy companies.

Consider the backstory: Since 2013, Louisiana parishes have pursued more than forty suits targeting oil and gas companies for crude-oil production dating to World War II. Their theory, breathtaking in its audacity, is that drilling undertaken to fulfill federal defense contracts during wartime was not “legally commenced” under a Louisiana coastal-permitting law that didn’t even take effect until 1980. The goal was to extract massive damages in state courts friendly to the plaintiffs’ bar—and it was working. A local jury in a related case delivered a verdict of $744.6 million against Chevron. This is what climate lawfare looks like. One question worth asking: Why have Louisiana’s Republican governor and attorney general chosen to make common cause with the climate litigation lobby against Louisiana’s own energy industry?

The federal officer removal statute exists precisely to prevent this kind of home-court shakedown. It allows parties who acted “under” federal officers to remove state suits to federal court when the claim is “for or relating to” those federal duties. Chevron’s wartime crude-oil production fed its federally contracted refining of aviation gasoline (avgas) for the U.S. military—a connection the Fifth Circuit majority found insufficient because Chevron’s refining contract didn’t specifically address how to obtain crude. Judge Andy Oldham dissented, rightly recognizing that crude oil is “indispensable” to avgas. The Supreme Court has unanimously vindicated him.

Justice Thomas’ twelve-page opinion is straightforward, readable, and to-the-point. He regularly talks about how judges should make their decisions understandable by the common citizen since that’s who judges really work for. He’s not going for flashy quotes, but clear legal analysis. He explains plainly: “Chevron’s case fits comfortably within the ordinary meaning of a suit ‘relating to’ the performance of federal duties.” The analysis is straightforward: “Relating to” is broad—it requires no explicit contractual directive and no strict causal chain—but it isn’t boundless. It demands a genuine connection, not a “tenuous, remote, or peripheral” one. Here, much of the crude oil taken from the relevant Louisiana fields fed Chevron’s avgas refining; the Petroleum Administration for War identified the Delta Duck Club field, which was involved in the case, as critical to the war effort because it produced a “preferential” grade of crude for avgas; and the production methods the parishes now condemn—including vertical drilling, which P.A.W. regulations expressly required, and earthen pits, which complied with the government’s directive to conserve steel—were integral to meeting the federal wartime mandate. The connection was not attenuated. It was essential to the national defense.

The implications extend well beyond Chevron. As a Wall Street Journal editorial recognized, when the federal government enlists private businesses for assistance—whether on defense production, immigration enforcement, cybersecurity, critical mineral extraction, or other important goals—those contractors must be able to count on a neutral federal forum if later sued for work done in federal service. Businesses will think twice about answering their country’s call if politically connected trial lawyers can haul them into sympathetic state courts to pay retroactively for conduct that was not only lawful but vital to national security.

Additionally, the Court will have another opportunity to rein in climate lawfare when it takes up Suncor Energy v. Commissioners of Boulder County next term. That case involves Boulder, Colorado’s attempt to dictate the entire country’s national energy policy through state-court tort claims. And it is hardly alone: Dozens of copycat lawsuits have been filed by other localities making similarly dubious arguments under state law. One of Boulder’s lead attorneys said the quiet part out loud: The goal of these climate cases, which seek untold billions of dollars, is to bankrupt the oil companies.

Justice Thomas’ opinion in Plaquemines Parish was joined by six other justices, with Justice Alito not participating in the case and Justice Jackson concurring in the judgment. Her opinion reaches the right result by a somewhat different path. She argues that the “for or relating to” language “requires a causal nexus between the targeted conduct and the federal duties” that is tighter than the standard adopted by the majority. But she concluded Chevron met that requirement. Much of her analysis looks to legislative history; we can imagine Justice Scalia, if he were still with us, having sharp words for that approach if it appeared in a majority opinion. But in a solo opinion concurring separately, it might have earned only a dry Scalian smile.

On the bottom line, the justices were unified. Yet another scheme by the climate lobby to weaponize the courts and forum-shop has been thwarted. Notably, Friday’s decision will mean that the $744.6 million verdict rendered against Chevron last year in a Plaquemines Parish suit will be wiped away, and that case will be one of the cases re-tried in federal court.