Supreme Court Clears the Way for Mountain Valley Pipeline as Appeal Moves Forward
Supreme Court Clears the Way for Mountain Valley Pipeline - The New York Times
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Supreme Court Clears the Way for Pipeline as Appeal Moves Forward
A congressional measure on the Mountain Valley Pipeline, championed by Senator Joe Manchin and added to legislation to raise the debt limit, was intended to thwart legal challenges to the project.
The Supreme Court on Thursday temporarily cleared the way for construction of a 300-mile pipeline capable of carrying two billion cubic feet of natural gas daily from northern West Virginia to southern Virginia.
The court’s brief order gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications, and the order was provisional as the case moves forward in the lower courts.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline, which has cost more than $6 billion, has been the subject of years of legal challenges from environmental groups and is nearing completion.
A provision concerning the pipeline was tucked into legislation enacted in June to raise the debt limit. The provision, championed by Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, barred most legal challenges to the construction and said challenges to the provision itself must be brought in a federal appeals court in Washington.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., nevertheless issued orders this month temporarily blocking the remaining construction.
Backers of the pipeline embraced the Supreme Court’s decision, expressing relief that construction would continue.
Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia’s attorney general, described the pipeline as crucial.
“The Mountain Valley Pipeline is vital to the survival of American energy independence and affects thousands of jobs in West Virginia,” Mr. Morrisey said in a statement. “Its completion is also critical to our national security.”
Environmental groups denounced the ruling, calling the pipeline “destructive” and adding that they would make every effort to stop it.
“The Mountain Valley Pipeline is a threat to our water, our air and our climate,” Jamie Williams, president of the Wilderness Society, one of the groups challenging the pipeline, said in a statement.
Lawyers for the project, led by Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who served as the U.S. solicitor general in the Obama administration, filed an emergency application in the Supreme Court asking the justices to lift the appeals court’s stay and allow the construction to proceed.
Under Supreme Court precedent, Congress may not direct the outcomes of particular cases. But it may change the law more generally, even retroactively, and even when it effectively ensures that one side will win. That is what Congress did in connection with the pipeline, the project’s lawyers argued.
“Congress has exercised its constitutional prerogatives to amend retroactively the relevant legal standards and processes in order to hasten completion of an infrastructure project it considers vital to the national interest,” they wrote, adding that the Fourth Circuit was thus powerless to block the pipeline.
“Time is of the essence,” the lawyers wrote. “Maintaining the stay orders for even a few additional weeks will prevent the pipeline from being placed in service by the end of the year as currently planned.”
They added: “The failure to complete the pipeline this year will deprive its shippers — including natural gas and electric utilities, gas producers and others — of critical additional gas transportation capacity for the upcoming winter peak demand season, contributing to natural gas shortages and price spikes, harming the general public and businesses alike.”
Mr. Manchin filed a supporting brief in the Supreme Court, saying that the provision was necessary and constitutional. “Faced with what seems to be unending litigation, and with no end in sight, Congress took matters into its own hands,” he wrote.
The Biden administration also filed a brief urging the justices to allow the construction to proceed, saying that the new law was constitutional and that the Fourth Circuit lacked jurisdiction over the case.
Environmental groups challenging the pipeline had asked the court to keep the Fourth Circuit’s freeze in place, arguing that Congress had overstepped in trying “to decide these cases for itself.”
Even as the Supreme Court announced its decision, lawyers in the case were before the Fourth Circuit, arguing about the constitutionality of Mr. Manchin’s provision.
The judge paused to announce the court’s decision, according to a person in the courtroom.
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002. More about Adam Liptak
Abbie VanSickle covers the Supreme Court with a focus on the world of the court, including its role in politics and the lives of the justices. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and a graduate of the U.C. Berkeley School of Law. More about Abbie VanSickle
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