The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of companies attempting to build a pipeline through New Jersey in a decision that divided the court’s conservative justices.
The case, which was argued earlier this year, arose out of a push led by the energy company PennEast Pipeline Company to seize land owned by New Jersey to build a $1 billion pipeline. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion in a 5-4 decision that overturned a lower court decision preventing the companies from building a 116-mile line through the state.
SUPREME COURT GREENLIGHTS PENNEAST NATURAL GAS PIPELINE SEIZING NEW JERSEY LAND
But Roberts’s opinion, which found that the federal government could allow the companies to overrule state objections with eminent domain, alienated half of the court’s conservatives. Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice Amy Coney Barrett also dissented and was joined by Justice Elena Kagan, as well as Thomas and Gorsuch.
Roberts, in the majority opinion, wrote that the decision rested on the idea that when New Jersey ratified the Constitution in 1787, it “surrendered their immunity from the exercise of the federal eminent domain.” Roberts added that the 1938 Natural Gas Act allows the federal government to give individual properties “the ability to condemn property in court.”
Barrett wrote that the court in the past has been hesitant to strip states of their sovereign immunity and that a situation involving eminent domain should be no different. Roberts’s argument, she added, had “no textual, structural, or historical support.” Instead, Barrett said, the court should have treated this as an interstate commerce case, where the federal government would have no power to force the pipeline on New Jersey.
“Congress cannot enable a private party like PennEast to institute a condemnation action against a nonconsenting State like New Jersey,” Barrett wrote.
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Gorsuch wrote that he agreed with Barrett in full and added that, by extending her reasoning, PennEast should be considered a citizen of Delaware, where it is based. Understood that way, the company is not able to take New Jersey’s land.
Since Barrett joined the court, the division among the court’s conservative supermajority has become more pronounced. In the past week, Barrett and Thomas have led dissents against Roberts. In both cases, they formed coalitions joined by the court’s more liberal members.
