Arguments just began for the 2025 U.S. Supreme Court term, and there is a case that conservatives should be tracking because it could bring the first Supreme Court rebuke of the Left’s ongoing campaign of woke lawfare.
Chevron v. Plaquemines Parish is a case that arises from a Louisiana parish’s effort to impose massive liability on energy companies such as Chevron and Exxon for crude oil production in the Louisiana coastal zone during World War II. It is part of a cohort of related Louisiana cases, one of which already delivered a judgment for $745 million. The question Plaquemines Parish presents to the court is, on its face, very technical: whether state or federal courts have jurisdiction to handle this type of lawsuit. But what matters most about the case is what is just below the surface.
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Plaquemines Parish is representative of a growing wave of state court cases that serve as a key avenue for local governments and left-wing activists to try and obtain policy outcomes by judicial edict or because of massive monetary judgments. This aspect of the case likely was a key part of what triggered multiple Republican state attorneys general to file a brief at the Supreme Court, in which the states warned that “[t]his case exemplifies a vast and troubling trend: state courts positioning themselves as forums to override national policy through nuclear verdicts, onerous injunctions, and more.”
Said differently, Plaquemines Parish is largely indistinguishable from the rest of the Left’s lawfare campaign because it uses the same tactics and seeks the same end goal from the litigation: punishment of the energy sector with massive monetary judgments alongside erasure of on-the-ground energy company operations within the pertinent jurisdictions.
This campaign of woke lawfare is a major threat to conservatives who are just trying to live a normal life free from liberal influence. It includes left-wing trial lawyers, nonprofits, and local governments, all of whom are trying to use injunctions, monetary judgments, and other court orders to control what companies can produce and what consumers can buy. While liberals might be losing at the ballot box, they see hope in this woke lawfare campaign, which can bring the Green New Deal to your home no matter what happens in Congress, reshaping our economy through the courtroom when liberals are losing influence elsewhere.
Other cases from this woke lawfare campaign have come up to the Supreme Court in connection with procedural skirmishes, but Plaquemines Parish is the first to reach the court in a posture where a loss would produce a real setback for the Left’s campaign. To be sure, if the court holds that this cohort of cases properly belongs in federal court, the immediate result will be the wipeout of the $745 million judgment, alone a huge setback. But there is also a strong indication that federal courts would dismiss all the Louisiana cases under binding precedent, sending the lawfare crowd packing. And a loss on the merits would have serious implications for the Left’s woke lawfare strategy overall, coming on the heels of a string of losses for the campaign in state courts in recent years.
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If you are a follower of lawfare, or you care about who gets to decide which products you can find on store shelves, you should keep your eye on Plaquemines Parish, with oral arguments coming up, likely in December, and a final decision this spring.
Plaquemines Parish will surely attract some independent attention for the fact that it involves large energy companies that make for click-worthy headlines or because it implicates a $745 million state court judgment. But the case is far more interesting for how it serves as a stalking horse for the rest of the campaign of woke lawfare that is coursing through state courts across the country. It is that stalking horse aspect of Plaquemines Parish that should pique the interest of most conservatives and lead all of us on the ideological Right to pull for the energy companies to win in a decisive fashion before the court. Because when woke lawfare loses, we all win.
O.H. Skinner is executive director of Alliance for Consumers and the former solicitor general of Arizona.
