The Supreme Court granted certiorari and agreed to hear the case of Chevron USA, Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, concerning land erosion on the state’s coast.
At issue is whether Chevron and other energy producers may remove Plaquemines Parish’s lawsuit from state court to federal court, and whether the federal government’s ordering the energy producers to increase high-octane aviation gasoline, or AvGas, production and supply to win World War II was considered “relating to” their correspondingly increased wartime crude oil production. Some blamed the increased production for the coastal erosion and so sought to punish and further restrict the energy producers.
The case is particularly important considering the Iran-Israel conflict, which has already affected global oil prices, and President Donald Trump’s very successful May 2025 trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Accordingly, it is worth examining why any state, particularly states with Republican governors and attorneys general, would oppose or obstruct the Trump administration’s energy policies to boost domestic energy production and lower America’s energy costs.
Louisiana state Attorney General Liz Murrill and her predecessor, Gov. Jeff Landry, both Republican Trump supporters, inexplicably joined with the infamous Louisiana mass-tort lawyer and heavy political donor John Carmouche to allege, inaccurately, that energy producers were responsible for Louisiana’s coastal land erosion and increased hurricane vulnerability since 1941.
Interestingly, mass-tort attorney Jimmy Faircloth Jr. represented Louisiana at trial, instead of a government attorney. This politically unusual alliance resulted in the $745 million Plaquemines jury verdict (it likely will be over a billion dollars with interest) now under Supreme Court review, and the mass-tort lawyers have ready another 42 similar lawsuits, hoping to force an early massive multibillion-dollar settlement.
It’s worth noting that plaintiffs’ attorneys donated heavily to Landry and Murrill, as well as their PACs, and to the trial judge, Michael Clement. Additionally, Landry appointed Carmouche in June 2024 to the prestigious Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors.
More troubling, Landry and now Murrill influenced the current litigation in favor of the plaintiffs. For example, in 2016, Landry and Carmouche signed a joint civil prosecution agreement where Landry preemptively promised that the Office of the Attorney General would not “expressly or impliedly endorse any [defendant’s] substantive defenses or exceptions,” even if it was valid or meritorious. The agreement remains active under Murrill.
In 1941, the federal government ordered energy production companies to extract and produce oil along the Louisiana coast for refining into AvGas to fight and win World War II. According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, they increased wartime AvGas (and therefore also crude oil) production more than twelvefold, from approximately 40,000 barrels per day in December 1941 to 514,000 per day by September 1945. This increase was crucial to American and Allied victory.
The federal government directed, controlled, and managed pipeline construction, transporting crude oil to refineries, distribution, storage, and other factors to efficiently manufacture and deliver petroleum products as quickly as possible.
This is why Louisiana, recognizing this federal direction and control, and dredging and building, passed the State and Local Coastal Resources Management Act of 1978 to grandfather in acts prior to 1980. The statute says, “Uses legally commenced or established prior to the effective date of the coastal use permit program shall not require a coastal use permit.”
Additionally, multiple academic studies by LSU researchers show that the erosion’s main causes were hurricanes and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’s previous dredging and building extensive levees and diversions since the early 1900s, which the federal government deemed necessary to control flooding and navigation but also prevented Mississippi River sediment from reaching and settling in the coastal marshes to naturally rebuild. Accordingly, Landry, then-attorney general, and the coastal parishes sued the federal government, saying the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “is responsible for a vast majority of our Louisiana coastal problems.”
It is contradictory and disingenuous for them to say now that some other party is responsible for the erosion.
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Moreover, instead of litigating, Landry and Murrill could ask their very powerful congressmen and senators for more federal funds to address coastal erosion. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and John Kennedy (R-LA) are on powerful committees. They should want American energy producers to be treated fairly. Plaintiffs’ lawyers can’t get paid suing the U.S. government or Mother Nature — or from congressional appropriations — so they instead sue energy producers with Landry’s and Murrill’s blessings.
There’s no question that the energy producers’ increased activity in Louisiana was “relating to” the federal government’s wartime demands. They could not possibly have produced more AvGas without first producing more crude oil. Furthermore, it is legally meritless to retroactively accuse them of violating Louisiana’s current coastal management laws in the wrong venue. The Supreme Court was right in granting review.
John Shu is a legal scholar and commentator who served in the administrations of former Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.