PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The United State Supreme Court sided Tuesday with a Pennsylvania-based private company, ruling they can seize state-owned land and protected lands to build part of a 120-mile natural gas pipeline through areas in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
By a 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court's decision allows the PennEast Pipeline project to continue.
The ruling says that companies building interstate pipelines, once their projects have been given the greenlight by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, can obtain the land they need even in the face of state opposition.
The project might have ended without Tuesday's result, according to a Villanova University law expert.
“From a constitutional standpoint, this was a significant one," said Michael Moreland, a professor at Villanova's Charles Widger School of Law.
"Had there been one more vote for the view that Congress couldn’t, through this statute, delegate the federal eminent domain power to these companies, it would have been a significant obstacle and probably would have spelled the end of the project unless there had been some other ways of getting around that problem."
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Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that when FERC issues a certificate of public convenience and necessity, federal law authorizes the certificate's holder “to condemn all necessary rights-of-way, whether owned by private parties or States.”
Roberts wrote that although “nonconsenting States are generally immune from suit, they surrendered their immunity from the exercise of the federal eminent domain power when they ratified the Constitution.” He said that because the federal Natural Gas Act “delegates the federal eminent domain power to private parties, those parties can initiate condemnation proceedings, including against state-owned property.” Roberts was joined by conservative justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh and liberal justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in a dissent that the majority's view that states had surrendered their immunity by ratifying the Constitution has "no textual, structural, or historical support." She was joined by fellow conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch and liberal Justice Elena Kagan.
Those opposed to the PennEast Pipeline project say the fight isn’t over.
The Delaware RiverKeeper Network is among those organizations, and they have filed several legal actions against the PennEast project.
“It doesn’t mean that the Penn East Pipeline Project is now going to be built. What it literally means is that the Delaware Riverkeeper legal actions are going to be released from abeyance and are going to continue apace," said Maya van Rossum of the Delaware RiverKeeper Network.
"There are also additional permits that are necessary from the state of Pennsylvania, from the state of New Jersey, and from the Delaware River Basin Commission before the PennEast pipeline could be allowed to inflict it’s devastating consequences on the people, communities and natural resources of our region."
In a statement, Anthony Cox, Chair of the PennEast Board of Managers, said in part:
“We are pleased that the Supreme Court kept intact more than seven decades of legal precedent for the families and businesses who benefit from more affordable, reliable energy. This decision (he says) is about more than just the PennEast project; it protects consumers who rely on infrastructure projects – found to be in the public benefit after thorough scientific and environmental reviews – from being denied access to much-needed energy by narrow state political interests."
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Click here to read the full Supreme Court ruling.
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