LOUISIANA — The Supreme Court issued an 8-0 procedural decision on Wednesday allowing oil and gas companies to move their Louisiana coastal land loss lawsuits to federal court.

The companies had asked the Supreme Court to overturn a 2024 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that allowed the suits to remain in state court. They argued that the cases belong in federal court because they began oil production and refining during the Second World War as U.S. contractors. The Trump administration supported the companies' argument to move the cases to federal court.

Justice Samuel Alito recused himself from the case, citing financial ties to ConocoPhillips. Alito had previously recused himself from other cases due to his stock holdings.

Dozens of lawsuits filed in 2013 allege that oil companies including Chevron and Exxon violated Louisiana's environmental laws for decades. The companies deny responsibility for land loss in Louisiana and said it is wrong to sue them for activities that occurred before state environmental regulations were in place.

In one of the state court cases, a jury ordered Chevron to pay upward of $740 million to clean up damage to Louisiana's coastline. Jurors in Plaquemines Parish found that Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001, had for decades violated Louisiana regulations governing coastal resources by failing to restore wetlands affected by dredging canals, drilling wells, and dumping billions of gallons of wastewater into the marsh.

For decades, oil companies working in Louisiana dredged canals through wetlands and dumped billions of gallons of waste in unlined pits that leached salts and toxic heavy metals into surrounding soil and water. The pollution killed cattle, crawfish, oysters, crops, and wetland plants, and has seeped into aquifers that provide drinking water to local communities. It also contributed to a land-loss crisis in southern Louisiana.

Louisiana's coastal parishes have lost more than 2,000 square miles of land over the past century, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which identified oil and gas infrastructure as a contributing cause of that land loss. Louisiana's coastal protection agency has warned that the state could lose an additional 3,000 square miles of land in the coming decades.