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Court to hear appeal from Chevron in landmark Louisiana coastal damage lawsuits
Legal Topics |
2025/06/23 12:48
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The Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear an appeal from Chevron, Exxon and other oil and gas companies that lawsuits seeking compensation for coastal land loss and environmental degradation in Louisiana should be heard in federal court.
The companies are appealing a 2024 decision by a federal appeals court that kept the lawsuits in state courts, allowing them to move to trial after more than a decade in limbo.
A southeast Louisiana jury then ordered Chevron to pay upwards of $740 million to clean up damage to the state’s coastline. The verdict reached in April was the first of dozens of lawsuits filed in 2013 against leading oil and gas companies in Louisiana alleging they violated state environmental laws for decades.
While plaintiffs’ attorneys say the appeal encompasses at least 10 cases, Chevron disagrees and says the court’s ruling could have broader implications for additional lawsuits.
Chevron argues that because it and other companies began oil production and refining during World War II as a federal contractor, these cases should be heard in federal court, perceived to be friendlier to businesses.
But the plaintiffs’ attorneys — representing the Plaquemines and Jefferson Parish governments — say the appeal is the companies’ latest stall tactic to avoid accountability. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit already rejected similar arguments from Chevron.
“It’s more delay, they’re going to fight till the end and we’re going to continue to fight as well,” said John Carmouche, a trial attorney in the Chevron case who is behind the other lawsuits. He noted that the companies’ appeal “doesn’t address the merits of the case.”
Chevron’s counsel, Paul Clement said in a statement that the company was “pleased” with the Supreme Court’s decision. Exxon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The court’s decision to hear the appeal offers the chance for “fair and consistent application of the law” and will “help preserve legal stability for the industry that fuels America’s economy,” said Tommy Faucheux, president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association, in an emailed statement.
In April, jurors in Plaquemines Parish — a sliver of land straddling the Mississippi River into the Gulf — found that energy giant Texaco, acquired by Chevron in 2001, had for decades violated Louisiana regulations governing coastal resources by failing to restore wetlands impacted by dredging canals, drilling wells and billions of gallons of wastewater dumped into the marsh.
“No company is big enough to ignore the law, no company is big enough to walk away scot-free,” Carmouche told jurors during closing arguments.
Louisiana’s coastal parishes have lost more than 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) of land over the past century, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which has also identified oil and gas infrastructure as a significant cause. The state could lose another 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) in the coming decades, its coastal protection agency has warned.
Chevron’s attorneys had argued that land loss in Louisiana was caused by other factors and that the company should not be held liable for its actions prior to the enactment of a 1980 environmental law requiring companies to obtain permits and restore land they had used.
The fact that the lawsuits had been delayed for so long due to questions of jurisdiction was “bordering on absurd,” the late-federal judge Martin Leach-Cross Feldman remarked in 2022 during oral arguments in one of the lawsuits, according to court filings. He added: “Frankly, I think it’s kind of shameful.”
Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, a longtime oil and gas industry supporter, nevertheless made the state a party to the lawsuits during his tenure as attorney general.
“Virtually every federal court has rejected Chevron’s attempt to avoid liability for knowingly and intentionally violating state law,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement. “I’ll fight Chevron in state or federal court—either way, they will not win.”
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Court blocks Louisiana law requiring schools to post Ten Commandments
Attorney News |
2025/06/19 19:48
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A panel of three federal appellate judges has ruled that a Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in each of the state’s public school classrooms is unconstitutional.
The ruling Friday marked a major win for civil liberties groups who say the mandate violates the separation of church and state, and that the poster-sized displays would isolate students — especially those who are not Christian.
The mandate has been touted by Republicans, including President Donald Trump, and marks one of the latest pushes by conservatives to incorporate religion into classrooms. Backers of the law argue the Ten Commandments belong in classrooms because they are historical and part of the foundation of U.S. law.
“This is a resounding victory for the separation of church and state and public education,” said Heather L. Weaver, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “With today’s ruling, the Fifth Circuit has held Louisiana accountable to a core constitutional promise: Public schools are not Sunday schools, and they must welcome all students, regardless of faith.”
The plaintiffs’ attorneys and Louisiana disagreed on whether the appeals court’s decision applied to every public school district in the state or only the districts party to the lawsuit.
“All school districts in the state are bound to comply with the U.S. Constitution,” said Liz Hayes, a spokesperson for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which served as co-counsel for the plaintiffs.
The appeals court’s rulings “interpret the law for all of Louisiana,” Hayes added. “Thus, all school districts must abide by this decision and should not post the Ten Commandments in their classrooms.”
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said she disagreed and believed the ruling only applied to school districts in the five parishes that were party to the lawsuit. Murrill added that she would appeal the ruling, including taking it to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.
The panel of judges reviewing the case was unusually liberal for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In a court with more than twice as many Republican-appointed judges, two of the three judges involved in the ruling were appointed by Democratic presidents.
The court’s ruling stems from a lawsuit filed last year by parents of Louisiana school children from various religious backgrounds, who said the law violates First Amendment language guaranteeing religious liberty and forbidding government establishment of religion.
The ruling also backs an order issued last fall by U.S. District Judge John deGravelles, who declared the mandate unconstitutional and ordered state education officials not to enforce it and to notify all local school boards in the state of his decision.
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the mandate into law last June.
Landry said in a statement Friday that he supports the attorney general’s plans to appeal.
“The Ten Commandments are the foundation of our laws — serving both an educational and historical purpose in our classrooms,” Landry said.
Law experts have long said they expect the Louisiana case to make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, testing the court on the issue of religion and government.
Similar laws have been challenged in court.
A group of Arkansas families filed a federal lawsuit earlier this month challenging a near-identical law passed in their state. And comparable legislation in Texas currently awaits Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Kentucky law violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The court found that the law had no secular purpose but served a plainly religious purpose.
And in 2005, the Supreme Court held that such displays in a pair of Kentucky courthouses violated the Constitution. At the same time, the court upheld a Ten Commandments marker on the grounds of the Texas state Capitol in Austin. |
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Supreme Court win for girl with epilepsy expected to make disability lawsuits
Legal Topics |
2025/06/15 18:32
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A teenage girl with a rare form of epilepsy won a unanimous Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that’s expected to make it easier for families of children with disabilities to sue schools over access to education.
The girl’s family says that her Minnesota school district didn’t do enough to make sure she has the disability accommodations she needs to learn, including failing to provide adequate instruction in the evening when her seizures are less frequent.
But lower courts ruled against the family’s claim for damages, despite finding the school had fallen short. That’s because courts in that part of the country required plaintiffs to show schools used “bad faith or gross misjudgment,” a higher legal standard than most disability discrimination claims.
The district, Osseo Area Schools, said that lowering the legal standard could expose the country’s understaffed public schools to more lawsuits if their efforts fall short, even if officials are working in good faith.
The family appealed to the Supreme Court, which found that lawsuits against schools should have the same requirements as other disability discrimination claims.
Children with disabilities and their parents “face daunting challenges on a daily basis. We hold today that those challenges do not include having to satisfy a more stringent standard of proof than other plaintiffs,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.
The court rebuffed the district’s argument, made late in the appeals process, that all claims over accommodations for people with disabilities should be held to the same higher standard — a potentially major switch that would have been a “five-alarm fire” for the disability rights community, the girl’s lawyers said.
Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, wrote separately to say he would be willing to consider those arguments at some point in the future, though he didn’t say whether they would win.
But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, saw it differently. Sotomayor wrote in another concurrence that adopting those higher standards more broadly would “eviscerate the core” of disability discrimination laws.
The girl’s attorney Roman Martinez, of Latham & Watkins, called Thursday’s ruling a win for the family and “children with disabilities facing discrimination in schools across the country.” He added that “it will help protect the reasonable accommodations needed to ensure equal opportunity for all.”
Judge blocks plan to allow immigration agents in New York City jail
A judge blocked New York City’s mayor from letting federal immigration authorities reopen an office at the city’s main jail, in part because of concerns the mayor invited them back in as part of a deal with the Trump administration to end his corruption case.
New York Judge Mary Rosado’s decision Friday is a setback for Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who issued an executive order permitting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies to maintain office space at the Rikers Island jail complex. City lawmakers filed a lawsuit in April accusing Adams of entering into a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain” with the Trump administration in exchange for the U.S. Justice Department dropping criminal charges against him. |
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Getty Images and Stability AI clash in UK copyright trial testing AI's future
Legal Business |
2025/06/11 20:39
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Getty Images is facing off against artificial intelligence company Stability AI in a London courtroom for the first major copyright trial of the generative AI industry.
Opening arguments before a judge at the British High Court began on Monday. The trial could last for three weeks.
Stability, based in London, owns a widely used AI image-making tool that sparked enthusiasm for the instant creation of AI artwork and photorealistic images upon its release in August 2022. OpenAI introduced its surprise hit chatbot ChatGPT three months later.
Seattle-based Getty has argued that the development of the AI image maker, called Stable Diffusion, involved “brazen infringement” of Getty’s photography collection “on a staggering scale.”
Tech companies have long argued that “fair use” or “fair dealing” legal doctrines in the United States and United Kingdom allow them to train their AI systems on large troves of writings or images. Getty was among the first to challenge those practices when it filed copyright infringement lawsuits in the United States and the United Kingdom in early 2023.
“What Stability did was inappropriate,” Getty CEO Craig Peters told The Associated Press in 2023. He said creators of intellectual property should be asked for permission before their works are fed into AI systems rather than having to participate in an “opt-out regime.”
Getty’s legal team told the court Monday that its position is that the case isn’t a battle between the creative and technology industries and that the two can still work together in “synergistic harmony” because licensing creative works is critical to AI’s success.
“The problem is when AI companies such as Stability AI want to use those works without payment,” Getty’s trial lawyer, Lindsay Lane, said.
She said the case was about “straightforward enforcement of intellectual property rights,” including copyright, trademark and database rights.
Getty Images “recognizes that the AI industry is a force for good but that doesn’t justify those developing AI models to ride roughshod over intellectual property rights,” Lane said.
Stability AI had a “voracious appetite” for images to train its AI model, but the company was “completely indifferent to the nature of those works,” Lane said.
Stability didn’t care if images were protected by copyright, had watermarks, were not safe for work or were pornographic and just wanted to get its model to the market as soon as possible, Lane said.
“This trial is the day of reckoning for that approach,” she said.
Stability has argued that the case doesn’t belong in the United Kingdom because the training of the AI model technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon.
The judge’s decision is unlikely to give the AI industry what it most wants, which is expanded copyright exemptions for AI training, said Ben Milloy, a senior associate at UK law firm Fladgate, which is not involved in the case.
But it could “strengthen the hand of either party ? rights holders or AI developers ? in the context of the commercial negotiations for content licensing deals that are currently playing out worldwide,” Milloy said.
In the years after introducing its open-source technology, Stability confronted challenges in capitalizing on the popularity of the tool, battling lawsuits, misuse and other business problems.
Stable Diffusion’s roots trace back to Germany, where computer scientists at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich worked with the New York-based tech company Runway to develop the original algorithms. The university researchers credited Stability AI for providing the servers that trained the models, which require large amounts of computing power.
Stability later blamed Runway for releasing an early version of Stable Diffusion that was used to produce abusive sexual images, but also said it would have exclusive control of more recent versions of the AI model.
Stability last year announced what it described as a “significant” infusion of money from new investors including Facebook’s former president Sean Parker, who is now chair of Stability’s board. Parker also has experience in intellectual property disputes as the co-founder of online music company Napster, which temporarily shuttered in the early 2000s after the record industry and popular rock band Metallica sued over copyright violations.
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Supreme Court makes it easier to claim ‘reverse discrimination’ in employment
Legal Business |
2025/06/07 00:29
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A unanimous Supreme Court made it easier Thursday to bring lawsuits over so-called reverse discrimination, siding with an Ohio woman who claims she didn’t get a job and then was demoted because she is straight.
The justices’ decision affects lawsuits in 20 states and the District of Columbia where, until now, courts had set a higher bar when members of a majority group, including those who are white and heterosexual, sue for discrimination under federal law.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the court that federal civil rights law draws no distinction between members of majority and minority groups.
“By establishing the same protections for every ‘individual’ — without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority or majority group — Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone,” Jackson wrote.
The court ruled in an appeal from Marlean Ames, who has worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services for more than 20 years.
Ames contends she was passed over for a promotion and then demoted because she is heterosexual. Both the job she sought and the one she had held were given to LGBTQ people.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars sex discrimination in the workplace. A trial court and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Ames.
The 6th circuit is among the courts that had required an additional requirement for people like Ames, showing “background circumstances” that might include that LGBTQ people made the decisions affecting Ames or statistical evidence of a pattern of discrimination against members of the majority group.
The appeals court noted that Ames didn’t provide any such circumstances.
But Jackson wrote that “this additional ‘background circumstances’ requirement is not consistent with Title VII’s text or our case law construing the statute.”
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Trump formally asks Congress to claw back approved spending targeted by DOGE
Legal Business |
2025/06/03 00:28
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The White House on Tuesday officially asked Congress to claw back $9.4 billion in already approved spending, taking funding away from programs targeted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
It’s a process known as “rescission,” which requires President Donald Trump to get approval from Congress to return money that had previously been appropriated. Trump’s aides say the funding cuts target programs that promote liberal ideologies.
The request, if it passes the House and Senate, would formally enshrine many of the spending cuts and freezes sought by DOGE. It comes at a time when Musk is extremely unhappy with the tax cut and spending plan making its way through Congress, calling it on Tuesday a “disgusting abomination” for increasing the federal deficit.
White House budget director Russ Vought said more rescission packages and other efforts to cut spending could follow if the current effort succeeds.
“We are certainly willing and able to send up additional packages if the congressional will is there,” Vought told reporters.
Here’s what to know about the rescissions request:
Will the rescissions make a dent in the national debt?
The request to Congress is unlikely to meaningfully change the troublesome increase in the U.S. national debt. Tax revenues have been insufficient to cover the growing costs of Social Security, Medicare and other programs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the government is on track to spend roughly $7 trillion this year, with the rescission request equaling just 0.1% of that total.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing that Vought — a “well-respected fiscal hawk,” she called him — would continue to cut spending, hinting that there could be additional efforts to return funds.
“He has tools at his disposal to produce even more savings,” Leavitt said.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus, among the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers, said they would like to see additional rescission packages from the administration.
“We will support as many more rescissions packages the White House can send us in the coming weeks and months,” the group said in a press release. “Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda.”
Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, gave the package a less optimistic greeting.
“Despite this fast track, the Senate Appropriations Committee will carefully review the rescissions package and examine the potential consequences of these rescissions on global health, national security, emergency communications in rural communities, and public radio and television stations,” the Maine lawmaker said in a statement.
Vought said he can send up additional rescissions at the end of the fiscal year in September “and if Congress does not act on it, that funding expires.”
“It’s one of the reasons why we are not putting all of our expectations in a typical rescissions process,” he added.
What programs are targeted by the rescissions?
A spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview some of the items that would lose funding, said that $8.3 billion was being cut from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. NPR and PBS would also lose federal funding, as would the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR.
The spokesperson listed specific programs that the Trump administration considered wasteful, including $750,000 to reduce xenophobia in Venezuela, $67,000 for feeding insect powder to children in Madagascar and $3 million for circumcision, vasectomies and condoms in Zambia.
Is the rescissions package likely to get passed?
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., complimented the planned cuts and pledged to pass them.
“This rescissions package reflects many of DOGE’s findings and is one of the many legislative tools Republicans are using to restore fiscal sanity,” Johnson said. “Congress will continue working closely with the White House to codify these recommendations, and the House will bring the package to the floor as quickly as possible.”
Members of the House Freedom Caucus, among the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers, said they would like to see additional rescission packages from the administration.
“We will support as many more rescissions packages the White House can send us in the coming weeks and months,” the group said in a press release. “Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda.”
Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, gave the package a less optimistic greeting.
“Despite this fast track, the Senate Appropriations Committee will carefully review the rescissions package and examine the potential consequences of these rescissions on global health, national security, emergency communications in rural communities, and public radio and television stations,” the Maine lawmaker said in a statement.
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World financial markets welcome court ruling against Trump's tariffs
Legal Business |
2025/05/29 14:59
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Financial markets welcomed a U.S. court ruling that blocks President Donald Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs on imports under an emergency-powers law.
U.S. futures jumped early Thursday and oil prices rose more than $1. The U.S. dollar rose against the yen and euro.
The court found the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Trump has cited as his basis for ordering massive increases in import duties, does not authorize the use of tariffs.
The White House immediately appealed and it was unclear if Trump would abide by the ruling in the interim. The long term outcome of legal disputes over tariffs remains uncertain. But investors appeared to take heart after the months of turmoil brought on by Trump's trade war.
The future for the S&P 500 was up 1.5% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.2%.
In early European trading, Germany's DAX gained 0.5% to 24,160.75. The CAC 40 in Paris jumped 0.9% to 7,860.67. Britain's FTSE was nearly unchanged at 8,722.63.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index jumped 1.9% to 38,432.98. American's largest ally in Asia has been appealing to Trump to cancel the tariffs he has ordered on imports from Japan and to also stop 25% tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection technician examines overseas parcels after they were scanned at the agency's overseas mail inspection facility at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Feb. 23, 2024.
The ruling also pushed the dollar sharply higher against the Japanese yen. It was trading at 145.40 yen early Thursday, up from 144.87 yen late Wednesday.
A three-judge panel ruled on several lawsuits arguing Trump exceeded his authority, casting doubt on trade policies that have jolted global financial markets, frustrated trade partners and raised uncertainty over the outlook for inflation and the global economy.
Many of Trump's double-digit tariff hikes are paused for up to 90 days to allow time for trade negotiations, but the uncertainty they cast over global commerce has stymied businesses and left consumers wary about what lies ahead.
"Just when traders thought they'd seen every twist in the tariff saga, the gavel dropped like a lightning bolt over the Pacific," Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.
The ruling was, at the least, "a brief respite before the next thunderclap," he said.
Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 1.3% to 23,561.86, while the Shanghai Composite index gained 0.7% to 3,363.45.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.2% to 8,409.80.
In South Korea, which like Japan relies heavily on exports to the U.S., the Kospi surged 1.9% to 2,720.64. Shares also were helped by the Bank of Korea's decision to cut its key interest rate to 2.5% from 2.75%, to ease pressure on the economy.
Taiwan's Taiex edged 0.1% lower, and India's Sensex lost 0.2%.
On Wednesday, U.S. stocks cooled, with the S&P 500 down 0.6% but still within 4.2% of its record after charging higher amid hopes that the worst of the turmoil caused by Trump's trade war may have passed. It had been roughly 20% below the mark last month.
The Dow industrials lost 0.6% and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.5%.
Trading was relatively quiet ahead of a quarterly earnings release for Nvidia, which came after markets closed.
The bellwether for artificial intelligence overcame a wave of tariff-driven turbulence to deliver another quarter of robust growth thanks to feverish demand for its high-powered chips that are making computers seem more human. Nvidia's shares jumped 6.6% in afterhours trading.
Like Nvidia, Macy's stock also swung up and down through much of the day, even though it reported milder drops in revenue and profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its stock ended the day down 0.3%.
The bond market showed relatively little reaction after the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its latest meeting earlier this month, when it left its benchmark lending rate alone for the third straight time. The central bank has been holding off on cuts to interest rates, which would give the economy a boost, amid worries about inflation staying higher than hoped because of Trump's sweeping tariffs. |
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Headline Legal News for You to Reach America's Best Legal Professionals. The latest legal news and information - Law Firm, Lawyer and Legal Professional news in the Media. |
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