Louisiana Lawsuits Work At Odds With Trump’s Energy Dominance Goals

When President Donald Trump attends Super Bowl LIX at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans this Sunday, he will be accompanied by Republican Governor Jeff Landry, who was elected in 2023 after serving as the state’s attorney general since 2016. The President may or may not be aware that his game-watching companion has chosen to involve Louisiana as a plaintiff in a campaign of coordinated lawsuits targeting the state’s oil and gas industry which works directly at odds with Trump’s agenda to restore American energy dominance.

Over the past decade, no fewer than 43 Louisiana parishes have worked with prominent trial lawyers to sue oil and gas companies over questionable claims that their operations have caused coastal erosion issues south of the Mississippi River. Make no mistake: It isn’t just the state that is a plaintiff in these cases, but Governor Landry himself. A May, 2024 decision by the United States 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals in a case filed against BP, Chevron, Shell, and a variety of other defendants specifically lists the “State of Louisiana, ex rel, on Behalf of Jeff Landry” as the intervenor plaintiff in the action.