On April 17, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States issued one decision:
Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, No. 24-813: This case addresses the scope of the federal officer removal statute, which permits an officer or “person acting under that officer” to remove to federal court state suits “for or relating to any act under color of such office.” 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1). As is relevant here, several Louisiana parishes brought lawsuits against oil companies, including Chevron, challenging the manner in which the oil companies extracted oil from Louisiana’s coastline. The parishes made clear they intended to challenge, among other things, certain defendants’ crude-oil production practices during the Second World War, when Chevron refined crude oil into aviation gasoline for the U.S. military. Chevron removed from state to federal court under the federal officer removal statute. The parishes sought remand, arguing that the methods Chevron used to extract crude oil were not governed by its agreements to refine crude oil into aviation gasoline, and were therefore outside the scope of the federal officer removal statute. The district court and Fifth Circuit agreed. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision authored by Justice Thomas, reversed and approved Chevron’s removal to federal court, holding Chevron plausibly alleged a close relationship between its challenged crude-oil production and the performance of its federal aviation gasoline refining duties—not a tenuous, remote, or peripheral one—and therefore satisfied the “relating to” requirement of the federal officer removal statute. Justice Jackson issued a concurrence. Justice Alito recused from the case.
View the Court's decision.
The Court also recently granted certiorari in one case: