Today, the Pelican Institute for Public Policy filed amicus briefs in two landmark cases now before the United States Supreme Court, each raising urgent questions about major distortions of the U.S. legal system to wage war on American energy production.
“These cases are about more than the energy industry—they are about the integrity of our constitutional legal system,” said Daniel Erspamer, CEO of the Pelican Institute. “In the end, it is American families and workers who pay the price when trial lawyers seize the power of the state seemingly for personal gain. The Supreme Court has an opportunity to restore accountability and protect both our energy future and our rule of law.”
In Chevron v. Plaquemines Parish, Pelican highlights Louisiana’s decade-long wave of coastal lawsuits, which seek to impose retroactive liability on hundreds of companies for oil and gas production activities dating back to World War II, which were conducted under federal permits, contracts, or wartime directives. After a $745 million jury verdict earlier this year, dozens of similar suits threaten to saddle Louisiana with billions in costs, drive investment out of the state, and imperil thousands of jobs.
“These cases demonstrate how politically motivated lawsuits are being weaponized to rewrite history and regulate by litigation,” said Sarah Harbison, General Counsel at the Pelican Institute. “When public officials surrender prosecutorial authority to private lawyers with financial incentives, they erode the rule of law, discourage energy investment, and ultimately harm the very citizens they claim to protect.”
In Suncor v. Boulder County, Pelican joined with the Manhattan Institute and other organizations to argue that Colorado’s attempt to apply state tort law to global greenhouse gas emissions violates constitutional principles of horizontal federalism. Allowing such suits to proceed would empower one state to dictate energy policy for the entire nation.
“The genius of America’s constitutional structure is that it leaves most policy issues to the states while allowing the federal government to handle truly interstate issues,” said Ilya Shapiro, the Manhattan Institute’s Director of Constitutional Studies. “The regulation of our national energy network and of national—indeed global—greenhouse gas emissions are such areas of authority that the Constitution wisely gives to Congress, not to the states, let alone county and local governments.”
The Pelican Institute for Public Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan research institute whose mission is to research and develop policy solutions that advance individual liberty, free enterprise, and opportunity for all Louisianans. Founded in 2008, the Pelican Institute believes every Louisianan should have the opportunity to flourish in communities where good opportunities abound and economic prosperity is achievable through hard work and ingenuity. In this capacity, Pelican has conducted extensive research on Louisiana’s coastal litigation, including comprehensive economic empirical work that demonstrates the coastal suits impose persistent deadweight losses on Louisiana’s economy, harming the citizens they are purportedly meant to help. Pelican’s 2019 economic analysis estimated, “Louisiana’s economy loses $44.4 million to $113.0 million per year due to lawsuit risk.” The study authored by economist Gavin Roberts, Ph.D., entitled “ The Cost of Lawsuit Abuse: An Economic Analysis of Louisiana’s Coastal Litigation” is available at https://pelicanpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Pelican-Institute_Coastal-Lawsuit-FINAL.pdf. Learn more about Pelican at https://pelicanpolicy.org/.
The Manhattan Institute is a nonprofit public policy research foundation whose mission is to develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility, to advance the flourishing of America’s great cities. Learn more at https://manhattan.institute/.
