The underlying dispute involves lawsuits brought by Louisiana parishes — including Plaquemines Parish — against oil companies for damage to coastal marshes, including allegations by respondents' counsel that the companies dumped billions of gallons of produced water from oil wells directly into the marsh. The oil companies seek removal to federal court, arguing that their World War II-era contracts to refine aviation gasoline for the federal government bring the suits within the Federal Officer Removal Act. The parishes counter that the charged conduct — crude oil production and its environmental consequences — was never directed by any federal officer and has no sufficient connection to the refining contracts.
The central statutory question is what work the phrase "for or relating to" does in the removal statute after Congress added "relating to" in a 2011 amendment. Paul D. Clement, arguing for the petitioners, told the Court that "relating to" carries broad meaning — words this Court has previously described as meaning connected to or associated with — and that Congress's addition of those words substantially expanded the universe of removable acts. He argued that crude oil was the indispensable component of the avgas the petitioners refined under federal contract, that the contracts themselves linked avgas pricing to the price of crude from the east Texas field, and that enjoining crude production during World War II would have directly impaired the federal war effort. Aaron Z. Roper, arguing for the United States as amicus supporting the petitioners, proposed that courts ask whether enjoining the charged conduct at the time would have impaired the defendant's ability to assist the federal government.
J. Benjamin Aguinaga, Louisiana's Solicitor General arguing for the respondents, urged the Court to affirm on the ground that the statute requires the charged acts themselves — not some separate act — to have been performed under a federal officer. He argued there is a fundamental mismatch: the petitioners were sued for dumping produced water into Louisiana marshes, conduct that occurred in the marsh in Plaquemines Parish, not at a refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. He also contended that the historical record undermines a but-for causal link, pointing to a section of the Petroleum Administration for War history describing the government's treatment of crude oil production as subject to a minimum of regulation and noting that 70 percent of the nation's crude went to civilian use during the war.
Several justices pressed hard on limiting principles. Chief Justice Roberts raised a butterfly effect concern — asking how far upstream "relating to" can reach before it becomes boundless. Justice Sotomayor questioned whether the petitioners' proposed test had any meaningful stopping point, noting that a but-for framing could sweep in employment disputes involving critical engineers. Justice Kagan posed a hypothetical about a peacetime government refining contract where crude is still the single component of the contracted product, and Clement acknowledged that would be enough to satisfy "relating to" even without the wartime context, though he argued the colorable federal defense prong would do additional limiting work in such cases.
Justice Jackson raised the conforming-amendment issue most directly, noting that an amicus brief from former Governor John Bel Edwards argued that the House report and legislative history show Congress added "or relating to" only to conform the statute to a separate change expanding the definition of civil action to include pre-suit discovery proceedings — not to broadly expand the causal nexus standard. Clement responded that the section-by-section analysis in the House report specifically states Congress was broadening the universe of acts that enable removal, and that Burgess v. United States stands for the proposition that even a conforming amendment must be given its textual effect. Roper added that when Congress enacted the 2011 statute, this Court had in over a dozen cases said that "relating to" is a broad, capacious term, and Congress enacted the language with that understanding.
Justice Barrett flagged two issues she said the Fifth Circuit had not resolved: whether a colorable federal defense exists, and whether the federal officer must be a current officer or one who existed at the time of the conduct — a question she noted Chief Judge Pryor had addressed in the Meadows case in a way Clement called badly, badly wrong. Clement urged the Court to at minimum hold that the facts here clearly satisfy whatever "relating to" test the Court adopts, and in rebuttal argued that the Fifth Circuit's contractual-directive test — requiring a specific contract term directing the precise conduct being sued over — is even more stringent than a but-for standard and finds no support in the statute or the Court's prior cases.