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The decision will make it more difficult to take businesses to court that had contracts with the federal government.
The Supreme Court on Friday sent a lawsuit seeking to hold oil and gas companies liable for damage to the Louisiana coast back to the federal courts (SCOTUSblog).
The plaintiff bar took a big loss at the Supreme Court on Friday, which means a win for the economy and rule of law. In a unanimous decision (Chevron v. Plaquemines Parish), Justices made it harder to raid businesses by holding that federal contractors can’t be hauled into state courts for claims relating to their government work (Wall Street Journal).
Justice Alito didn’t participate because he has stock in one of the companies involved in the dispute. At the center of the case was whether or not Chevron could move their case from state courts to federal courts via the “federal officer removal statute.” Justice Thomas, writing for the majority, said indeed they can: Held: Chevron has plausibly alleged a close relationship between its challenged crude-oil production and the performance of its federal avgas refining duties—not a tenuous, remote, or peripheral one—and has therefore satisfied the “relating to” requirement of the federal officer removal statute (Supreme Court).