Justices side with oil and gas companies fighting environmental lawsuits | AP News

So many people are trying to explain what’s going on but there’s too much ignorant rage drowning out the actual truth

Thank you. Unanimous Supreme Court votes always merit a closer look beyond a clickbait headline. How often do the left and right unanimously agree on anything? When it happens there is usually a good reason for it.

Sure, it’s a procedural decision, but there are two major implications for all future environmental lawsuits. First is that all experts in these cases will have to pass muster of a federal Daubert challenge. This adds time, money, and risk to these already complex cases—likely resulting in a chilling effect on environmental litigation. Second is that it allows defendants to get out of a venue (based on their own averments, truthful or not) where the jury pool will be most harmed by their activities, and pool from a multiple county venire which may not be as directly harmed. Winning one of these cases is hard enough. Winning in federal court is even more difficult.

Don’t let the fascists take our environment, they literally want to kill us all for that capitalistic profit.

The problem is that the Trump Administration will just drop any efforts to do take them through federal court. That seems to be the trajectory of this decision. It's only the timing that's making everyone upset, because if this was decided in 2028, the feds would take them back to court. My big argument here is that they have a solid argument that I agree with, but that should have come up during the actual trial(s) and not miraculously proposed for the appeal. I don't see anything saying this was brought up before the juries or anything, which I feel is where this should have started. You typically can't introduce new information on an appeal without a strong argument and my argument is "you waited how long to realize this should be in federal court? With how much money spent on lawyers?" The fact that the state was trying to hold them for damages caused before the state regulated things is extremely iffy though. I agree something needs to happen but you honestly can't hold companies to today's standards for stuff that happened 50+ years ago, because the technology and science just wasn't there to meet today's requirements. The right thing to do, but the wrong way to do it.

Insert Ralph Wiggams.gif: That's unpossible.

Looking at the why, it's not too surprising that it was an 8-0 decision since it's just a procedural question and answer saying that the lawsuits have to be in Federal court because the harm they're being sued over happened due to work they did for the Federal government. Though having to fight it out in the 5th circuit is basically a delayed win for the energy companies because even if a 5th circuit judge rules against the energy companies, it's extremely unlikely that'll survive appeals (and the SCOTUS would likely just refuse to hear an appeal if it won't benefit the corporations to do so).

No one read the article or ruling, of course. The question before the court was whether the trial should be in federal court or not. The court *unanimously* ruled that since the companies were acting as federal contractors, it should be in federal court. Because that's what the law says about federal contractors. The companies are still being sued. The companies wanted this because they're less likely to have a jury sympathetic to the plaintiffs. It's not the court's job to rule against oil companies because you don't like oil companies. It's the court's job to say what the law says. If you have a problem with that, then you should be angry at Congress for making a bad law.

Don't worry the pollution will take at least a few years to kill people. The profits will be immediate.

Worse for the average person *and* the environment, especially down there, but not even thinking about air pollutants.

Thomas gotta keep gas prices low for his giant RV GriftMobile.

Shocked. Shocked I tell you.

That, or the plaintiff's lawsuit just lacked merit.

I think it was the Citizens United ruling in ~~2000~~ 2010 that killed it. 2016 was when we all started noticing the rot and decomp setting in. Today, most people are finally realizing that the elites have known about the country being dead for some time, and we're just stuck watching them carve it up so they can rule over their portion of the husk. This country is effectively dead until those elites are.

Ginsburg dying was the death, we would have been ok had she made it

Weird because everyone has been telling me I was overreacting for the past decade.

Howard dean was right.

There is no real process to do this especially if the defendant does not bring this up and even if the defendant does bring it up in trial, the judge might still allow the case to proceed. This is a civil trial and the State court judge didn't have any reason to throw out the case. There appears to be legal merit, there is no statute of limitations and there are laws on the books. And the Federal Courts do not (under Article 3 of the Constitution) offer advisory opinions. One cannot go to a Federal Court and ask them hypothetically whether or not the case should be heard by Federal or State courts.

The entire f****** government is corrupt

All news is basically click bait now that they are funded by ad sales. It sucks.  

Also the decision was unanimous, so it’s not just the corrupt ghouls on the court weighing in on this.

So is this based in anything legal or you just talking out of your ass? I don't like them either, but illegitimate they are not. The damage they can do because of that fact is worse.

Turns out, for the right price, everything’s for sale.