Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish: Oral Argument

Case Summary:Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish grows out of a set of Louisiana coastal‑damage suits in which Plaquemines Parish and other local governments allege that Chevron and other oil and gas companies’ decades of exploration and production activities in the coastal zone, such as dredging canals, drilling, and failing to comply with Louisiana’s State and Local Coastal Resources Management Act permitting scheme, eroded wetlands and harmed waterways, and seek money damages and restoration costs. Chevron, a vertically integrated company that both produced crude oil in Louisiana and refined aviation gasoline for the federal government during World War II under federal contracts, removed the parish suits from state court to federal court under the federal‑officer removal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1), arguing that its challenged production activities were “connected or associated with” its federally directed wartime refining work, but the district courts and the Fifth Circuit held that the complaints targeted only crude‑oil production and related permitting practices not directed by federal contracts and therefore ordered the cases remanded to state court. The issue before the Supreme Court is whether Chevron can rely on the federal‑officer removal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1), to remove these Louisiana coastal‑damage suits to federal court based on its World War II–era federal refining contracts, even though the parish complaints on their face challenge only state‑law coastal‑zone production activities and permitting noncompliance, not the federally directed refining work.