A fossil fuel giant with deep ties to Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch, along with other powerful pro-business groups, is explicitly pressuring Gorsuch and his fellow justices to rule in favor of oil and gas interests in an upcoming Supreme Court case.
If the high court agrees, not only could it help authorize a controversial crude oil train running alongside a critical waterway, it could also invalidate the constitutionality of one of the country’s preeminent environmental laws.
Petitioners in the case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, are challenging an environmental review process that’s holding up an eighty-eight-mile rail line project designed to transport crude oil just feet away from a fragile Colorado River tributary that forty million people rely on — and where an oil spill could be catastrophic.
The Anschutz Exploration Corporation — a Denver-based oil and gas company whose owner, Philip Anschutz, helped get Gorsuch appointed to a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals position in 2006 — is one of the largest oil producers in the region the proposed rail line would serve. If approved, the rail line would be a boon for Anschutz’s company.
In addition to the case’s existential stakes for the megadrought-stricken American Southwest, the court’s ruling has the potential to be “very precedential,” said Kevin Minoli, former general counsel at the Environmental Protection Agency and current partner at Alston & Bird, a Washington, DC–based corporate law firm.
“I would expect it to be a fairly large, very significant decision coming out of this case,” Minoli told us. “I don’t think the Supreme Court takes the case just to make a narrow ruling on the scope of agency…
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Auteur: Freddy Brewster
