- 18 Republican AGs, led by Texas AG Ken Paxton and West Virginia AG Patrick Morrisey, filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. Corps of Engineers v. Northern Plains Resource Council, No. 19A1053, urging the Supreme Court to stay, pending appeal, a district court order vacating the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Nationwide Permit 12 (“NWP-12”) as applied to construction of new oil and gas pipelines anywhere in the United States.
- The brief argues that NWP-12 creates an efficient, cost-effective permitting process for energy infrastructure projects, including pipelines, which are critical to the economies of the amici states, and that the amici states will be negatively impacted by the application of the district court’s order nationwide. The brief notes that the original case involved a single pipeline and none of the parties sought a nationwide injunction for all oil and gas pipelines.
- The brief argues that a stay is appropriate because, among other things, the district court’s order is likely to be overturned for being flawed and overbroad, and because an appeals court had already upheld a prior, substantially similar version of the permit.