Justice Thomas delivered the opinion for a seven-justice majority, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Justice Jackson filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Justice Alito took no part in the decision.
The parish and other Louisiana parishes sued oil and gas companies in 2013, alleging the companies lacked permits for coastal zone uses under the State and Local Coastal Resources Management Act. An expert report filed by the parish indicated an intent to challenge Chevron's wartime crude-oil production, alleging Chevron "failed to use steel tanks instead of earthen pits," should not have used vertical-drilling methods, and "failed to equip fields with sufficient roads, using canals instead."
Chevron removed the case, arguing the suit related to its contractual duties to refine crude into aviation gasoline for the military. The District Court remanded, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed, reasoning that the refining contract did not specify how Chevron was to acquire crude oil.
The Supreme Court read the statute's "relating to" language broadly. The phrase means "to stand in some relation or have bearing or concern," the Court said, and one thing can relate to another "even if the connection is indirect, not specifically designed to affect it, or without a strict causal relationship." The ordinary meaning, the Court added, requires a connection "that is not tenuous, remote, or peripheral."
The Court found Chevron's suit related to its federal duties because it "implicated Chevron's wartime efforts to produce and supply aviation gasoline's essential feedstock." Much of the crude produced in Plaquemines Parish, the Court noted, was ultimately used for Chevron's own aviation gasoline refining.
The Court rejected the Fifth Circuit's reading that the refining contract's silence on crude acquisition broke the link. The ordinary meaning of "relating to" does not require a defendant to show that "federal duties specifically invited the challenged conduct," the Court held. It also rejected the argument that the Government's wartime allocation of crude to refineries severed the relation, stating that "an act can relate to its consequences even when the causal chain includes actions by intermediaries."
The Court further disagreed with Louisiana's argument that §1442(a)(1) requires a defendant to have been acting under a federal officer when taking the specific actions challenged. That reading, the Court held, would "impermissibly conflate the 'acting under' and 'for or relating to' elements of the federal officer removal test."