Bayou Barataria in Louisiana, United States. Louisiana is experiencing significant land erosion, including in the coastal wetlands. Efforts to punish fossil energy producers through expansive litigation threaten the national wealth, energy affordability, and economic gains those industries help generate. (Shutterstock/Bloodberry)

American Energy National Wealth Wins at the US Supreme Court

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Efforts to punish fossil energy producers through expansive litigation threaten the national wealth, energy affordability, and economic gains those industries help generate.

Litigation in pursuit of large money grabs is nothing new, and what fun it is to pursue such defendants as the fossil energy industry. The fun diminishes sharply when courts look askance at this lawsuit game, the most recent example of which is a massive, attempted money grab that the Supreme Court resoundingly constrained in April. In Chevron v. Plaquemines Parish, the Court ruled unanimously that federal contractors—in this case, energy producers in Louisiana coastal erosion lawsuits—cannot be sued in state courts for purported harms created in the course of their work for the federal government.

Beginning in 2013, several Louisiana parishes filed 43 lawsuits against fossil energy producers, asserting that they are responsible for the long-term land erosion problem in southern Louisiana.........

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