An oil spill in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana in 2010. This photo by the U.S. Coast Guard is in the public domain.
Next week, the Supreme Court will be back in session and ready to deal new blows to our basic institutions of governance while stripping away longstanding rights and protections for marginalized communities. The Court’s docket includes cases on the constitutionality of racial gerrymandering, bans on gay “conversion therapy,” campaign finance restrictions, and more.
The Court has also picked up several environmental cases to round out its 2025-2026 docket, including a notable case out of Louisiana: Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish. The suit involves coastal parishes in Louisiana who filed lawsuits against several oil and gas conglomerates, including Texaco (now owned by Chevron), alleging that the companies violated environmental regulations and permitting requirements for decades. The (alleged) result? Disastrous degradation of the state’s vulnerable coastline. A Louisiana jury awarded Plaquemines Parish a judgement of $740 million against the company this past April.
Seeking to avoid liability, Chevron argues that since some of the crude oil Texaco produced on the sites in question was used to fulfill government contracts during World War II, it should be able to force the lawsuits into the federal court system, a venue considered to be more corporate-friendly in such litigation. Chevron’s argument is so absurd that it has even drawn the ire of some of Louisiana’s biggest fossil fuel advocates, including both Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and now-Governor Jeff Landry.
We don’t yet know how the Supreme Court will rule in Chevron v Plaquemines Parish, or to what degree it might grant fossil fuel companies their latest wish, but the case comes on the heels of a slate of anti-environmental and pro-corporate Supreme Court decisions from last term. One little discussed but very consequential case called Diamond Alternative Energy LLC v. Environmental Protection Agency might shed light on the Court’s amenability to the fuel industry’s arguments.
The Context
As we discussed back in March, Diamond Alternative Energy was at that point the latest in a barrage of anti-clean air litigation being rammed through the courts by corporate polluters seeking to evade present and future liability for toxic and planet-warming air pollution.
It is little consolation that the Supreme Court did not also take up a different case that the oil and gas industry was pushing, which would have given the Court the opportunity to take aim at Section 209 of the Clean Air Act. That provision authorizes the EPA to grant California waivers that enable the state to enforce more stringent emissions standards for certain classes of vehicles.
Instead, in Diamond Alternative Energy, the court addressed the question of whether fuel producers have standing to challenge Section 209. While not the worst case scenario for the Clean Air Act, it is likely to have dangerous consequences for the environment. It also opens the door for third-parties to claim standing to challenge regulations in a host of issue areas.
What Did SCOTUS Say?
Justice Brett Kavanaugh penned the majority opinion in Diamond Alternative Energy, creating out of seemingly whole cloth a new litmus test for standing that “commonsense inferences” about the behavior of regulated plaintiffs can allow unregulated parties to sue, even when such entities do not present evidence as to that impact. Ultimately, the ruling sketches out a significantly more expansive view of standing, if parties can predict cascading economic harm.
That view intrinsically privileges (already privileged) corporations before federal courts. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson intimated in her fiery dissent, it functionally adjusted standing requirements “to let certain litigants challenge the actions of the political branches” while maintaining that others are functionally ineligible to receive reprieve from harm.
Jackson also expressed “worry that the fuel industry’s gain [in this case] comes at a reputational cost for this Court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests.” In cases stretching back decades, Jackson explored a slate of issues in which the Court refused to engage in the “speculation” of determining standing for various kinds of plaintiffs. The majority opinion in Diamond Alternative Energy tilted an already uneven playing field even further in favor of certain powerful entities like oil and gas conglomerates and other polluters.
Who Benefits?
Who wins in that imbalanced regime? We can look at who filed briefs in support of the plaintiffs to find out. These amici filers celebrated the decision as a huge win, with consequences for vulnerable people seeking protection from a litany of issues before the court.
The General Counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group, took to Twitter this summer to celebrate how the Supreme Court’s decision will empower its clients to selectively withhold basic healthcare from their employees, regardless of state law. Its amicus brief in the case expounds on how the wants of employers should invariably exceed the rights of the people they employ, and how redefining standing is crucial to achieving that project.
Advancing American Freedom similarly filed an amicus brief in Diamond Alternative Energy, arguing that the redefinition of standing would empower anti-abortion crusaders and parents seeking to strip their queer children of any safe spaces or basic affirmation that they might find at school. The organization’s argument is functionally founded on the idea that (conservative) parents should be able to use federal courts as a weapon to control school environments by enforcing the conditions of their particular religious affiliations and beliefs on their children—but also those of others—regardless of whether that is practicable, and whether evidenced “harm” to those parents has actually occurred.
As Justice Jackson concluded in her dissent: “If the Court privileges the interests of one class of litigants over others, even unintentionally, it can damage Americans’ faith in an impartial Judiciary and undermine the long-term credibility of its judgments. […] if the Court is not fastidious in maintaining consistency across its certiorari decisions and substantive rulings, its decisions will come to represent, like so many marble façades, another mere facsimile of justice.”
What Now?
Diamond Alternative Energy provided further confirmation that corporate polluters thinks that they should play by different rules. Unfortunately, the high court’s majority seems to agree. As we enter yet another year of consequential Supreme Court cases, Chevron USA Inc represents another industry request for preferential treatment that may well be granted.
If oil and gas companies (and other corporate conglomerates) are allowed to force states and counties into their courtroom of choice, it will only serve to further degrade the access that regular people have to even the pretense of justice.
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we have published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week:
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) In The Trump Era
Ted Cruz Attempts to Exempt Big Tech From the Law
How Democrats Lost Big Business
CFPB Hires Ex-Lobbyist For Top Policy Job Amid Rollbacks
Your guide to the billionaire-backed groups working to push Dems right in 2026