Louisiana’s coastal lawsuits are sold as a local fight over wetlands and erosion. In reality, they are an attempt to use state courts to rewrite decades of federally authorized energy production and give trial lawyers and local juries a veto over national energy policy.
In related news, Louisiana legislators have introduced House Bill 804, the Louisiana Energy Protection Act. The bill would protect energy producers and related industries from climate-related liability claims, bar claims based on emissions originating outside Louisiana and limit claims based on in-state emissions unless plaintiffs meet strict proof requirements.
The bill now heads to the State Senate, but the same special interests driving the coastal litigation – including powerful trial attorney John Carmouche and the extreme green group Sierra Club – are working to amend HB 804 to protect these meritless Louisiana coastal lawsuits. This provision would undermine the bill’s central purpose and preserve these disastrous energy lawsuits, which are more likely to be found in a blue state like California than in a red state like Louisiana.
The HB 804 bill will be a failed opportunity if it is ultimately amended to protect Governor Jeff Landry’s special prosecution arrangement and shield powerful trial lawyers like John Carmouche and environmentalist activist groups such as the Sierra Club that are pushing to preserve these meritless lawsuits.
Louisiana’s state lawmakers should take three steps to bring the state into alignment with President Donald Trump’s energy agenda:
- Demand that Governor Landry rescind the 2016 joint prosecution agreement that outsourced the Attorney General’s prosecutorial authority to for-profit trial lawyers like John Carmouche.
- Governor Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill should drop the over 40 meritless coastal lawsuits.
- Declare that Louisiana is open for business and affirm that the state is more closely aligned with President Trump’s energy dominance agenda by distancing itself from the coastal lawsuits.
Louisiana lawmakers should ask themselves a simple question: Do they stand with money-hungry trial lawyers like John Carmouche and environmental activist groups like Sierra Club, or with President Trump?
Louisiana is right to advance legislation that would prohibit anti-energy litigation against lawful energy activity. In 2025, the Trump Administration issued the Executive Order “Protecting American Energy From State Overreach,” which criticized states for “subjecting energy producers to arbitrary or excessive fines through retroactive penalties.”
Louisiana’s coastal lawsuits are a textbook example of the state overreach President Trump warned against, and lawmakers should not shield or enable these meritless cases by supporting measures that directly undermine his executive order.
The lawsuits have exposed the political machine surrounding Louisiana’s coastal litigation, where politically connected trial lawyers like John Carmouche bankroll the officials and judges who can influence where these cases proceed.
The U.S. Supreme Court complicated that effort with their decision in Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish. The justices ruled unanimously 8-0 thatenergy producers’ wartime crude oil production, much of it refined into aviation gasoline for the U.S. military, was tied closely enough to its federal responsibilities to belong in federal court under thefederal officer removal statute.
Yet again, Louisiana’s coastal lawsuits conflict with the Trump administration’s positions. Ahead of this unanimous decision, the Trump Justice Department filed a brief recommending that these cases proceed in a fair federal court venue rather than in Louisiana’s biased court system.
The ruling doesn’t decide whether energy producers are liable for coastal erosion, but it does decide where these cases will proceed.
The Supreme Court decision allows federal officers, agencies and those acting under their direction to remove Louisiana coastal lawsuits to federal court. The law ensures that those carrying out federal duties, especially those tied to defense and energy security, are not trapped in hostile local forums.
The Louisiana cases date back to 2013, when Plaquemines Parish and other coastal parishes began filing what became 42 lawsuits blaming energy producers for coastal erosion tied to historic operations, including work carried out in support of the military’s World War II effort.
The lawsuits seek billions of dollars for conduct that was lawful, federally encouraged and, in many cases, directly connected to the national war effort. One Louisiana jury has already issued a $744.6 million award against Chevron alone.
The lawsuits are the latest front in a national campaign by activist governments and for-profit trial lawyers to impose through the courts the energy policies Congress has refused to enact.
The Washington Free Beacon has reported that the lawyers who secured the landmark April 2025 jury verdict contributed nearly $15,000 to the Louisiana judge who presided over the case. Under thePlaquemines Parish legal services contract, attorney fees and costs following a judgment are to be awarded by the court, which means the same judge who accepted contributions from the plaintiff firms could ultimately determine the size of their fee award.
The Free Beacon also reported that attorney John Carmouche chaired a 2012 PAC formed to elect then-appellate judge Jefferson Hughes to the Louisiana Supreme Court. Carmouche, his father and another firm attorney gave $280,000 to that PAC. Hughes won, and he conceivably remains eligible to hear some of the coastal cases.
The political investments have not stopped there. Talbot, Carmouche & Marcello and its partners have given significant sums to Gov. Landry and Attorney General Murrill, both of whom have supported the lawsuits. While serving as attorney general in 2016, Landry signed a joint prosecution agreement with Carmouche and other private trial lawyers that committed the state to the litigation effort and required it to reject oil defendants’ arguments regardless of merit.
The lawsuits also undermine the Trump administration’s broader mandate under the “Declaring a National Energy Emergency” executive order, treating interference with domestic energy production as a threat to energy independence and national security.
Louisiana’s economy runs on energy. According to the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, the industry supports roughly 306,750 energy jobs and contributes some $25.5 billion in annual total statewide earnings. Yet the Pelican Institute describes the coastal lawsuits as a “shadow tax” that discourages investment in the state.
Louisiana’s coastal lawsuits do not just threaten domestic energy security. They threaten to turn Louisiana into a model for trial lawyer-led anti-capitalist legal shakedowns, where elected officials outsource questions of national policy to politically connected law firms and local courts.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Chevron v. Plaquemines Parish does not end Louisiana’s coastal litigation, but it does move the dispute to the proper venue. HB 804 now gives Louisiana lawmakers the opportunity to ensure that Louisiana’s coastal lawsuits are not protected in their otherwise worthwhile effort to reject anti-energy lawsuits that harm the state.