This Supreme Court ‘victory’ for oil giants is not what it seems

For millions of years, the Mississippi River flowed unchecked, carrying roughly 400 million metric tons of sediment down to Louisiana, where it spilled into the Gulf of Mexico to create new land. But in the early 20th century, a series of dams and river-training structures were built to prevent flooding — leaving the river tamed and unable to produce new terrain at anywhere near its previous pace. Oil and gas development, which ripped broad canals through vulnerable marshland, made matters worse. 

As sea levels rose, existing land subsided, and more brutal storms battered the coast. Louisiana lost more than 2,000 square miles of wetlands over the last century, a slow dismantling exacerbated by climate change. About a football field or more land disappears every 100 minutes, and the state’s southern parishes are expected to lose another 3,000 square miles by 2050 unless drastic action is taken. After years of devastating hurricanes, many of Louisiana’s southernmost towns have been emptying out.

Complex restoration efforts remain the state’s best hope, but the Supreme Court hampered these initiatives earlier this month when it unanimously ruled that a lawsuit filed by Plaquemines Parish against Chevron — accusing the company of damaging coastal wetlands and accelerating land loss — should be moved to federal court, rather than the state court in which it was filed. The ruling effectively cancels a $745 million judgment against Chevron, decided before its appeal landed in front of the Supreme Court, and sets up a rematch of a decade-long legal fight. 

“Frankly, it’s a ridiculous situation,” said Patrick Parenteau, emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School. “All this time and effort has gone into litigating these issues before a jury in Louisiana. Now you have to do it all over again, but you’re doing it sort of up the street in the federal courthouse.” 

Federal courts are generally seen as more industry friendly, and the Supreme Court’s ruling was applauded by the Trump administration. Critics are calling it a win for oil majors, but legal experts say it’s only a brief reprieve for oil companies, which will still have to face a Louisiana jury in federal court.  

Plaquemines Parish’s lawsuit is one of dozens filed by Louisiana’s parishes against oil majors. Chevron appealed the state court’s ruling in favor of Plaquemines Parish last year, because the case focused on the company’s work drilling off the Louisiana coast back in World War II. Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the lawsuit should be moved to federal court, as the company was working as a military contractor during that time. 

“I was surprised that the case was not removed to federal court originally,” said Edward P. Richards, a professor of law at Louisiana State University. He said that the lawsuit involves a number of aspects — dredging permits in navigable waterways, for example — that fall under federal purview. 

“I think that might be the reason the more liberal justices also went along with the ruling,” Richards said. “There were a lot of reasons that this should be in federal court.” 

What’s more, Richards explained, so few people are left in some of the southern parishes that it’s difficult to find an impartial jury — although it’s also unlikely companies will find a much friendlier audience in federal court. Louisiana might be one of the most conservative states in the country, but residents in these low-lying parishes don’t need to believe in or care about climate change to see that sea levels are rising and flooding has become more frequent. Governor Jeff Landry, for example, has been a longtime supporter of oil and gas, going so far as to call climate change a “hoax” and packing state environmental offices with fossil fuel executives. Still, the Republican has explicitly backed these parish lawsuits demanding damages from oil companies.

The transfer of the Plaquemines lawsuit to federal court is sure to be frustrating for parishes looking for funds to restore their coastlines. Last year, Louisiana lost its most ambitious plan to combat sea level rise when Landry canceled the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project. The initiative was formed as part of the state’s “coastal master plan” and aimed to harness Mississippi’s former land-making power through an intricate series of locks and dams, funneling sediment into Barataria Bay off Plaquemines Parish, where it would support the growth of new wetlands.

The project would have been one of the largest ecosystem restoration undertakings in the country’s history, according to The Audubon Society, and was supposed to be funded in part by remediation money from the Deepwater Horizon Spill. But Landry scuttled it, citing concerns about construction costs — even though the project had received $3 billion in funding from the Deepwater Horizon settlement —and the possibility that the project would damage the state’s seafood industry. Many shrimpers and oyster farmers opposed it over worries that the influx of freshwater from the Mississippi River would drive their catch out of the bay. 

Both Richards and Parenteau said that the Supreme Court’s decision is unlikely to have any impact on the climate lawsuits filed by other states, such as Hawaii and Rhode Island. Those lawsuits are not concerned with the damage the oil industry has done to any specific area, but rather what companies said and when: Oil majors, those lawsuits contend, knew that climate change was real and ran disinformation campaigns to avoid the consequences. 

“We’re a long way from finding out what these individual cases are going to result in, in terms of damage awards,” Parenteau said. “But it could be a very, very significant amount of money, that’s for sure.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This Supreme Court ‘victory’ for oil giants is not what it seems on Apr 28, 2026.