County of Santa Cruz v. Chevron Corp.

The federal district court for the Northern District of California granted motions by the County of Santa Cruz, City of Santa Cruz, and City of Richmond to remand to state court their lawsuits seeking to hold fossil fuel companies liable for climate change harms. The court cited its previous remand order in cases brought by the County of San Mateo, County of Marin, and City of Imperial Beach. The court stayed the remand orders pending the outcome of appeals in those other cases. The defendants are appealing to the Ninth Circuit.

The defendants in the Santa Cruz lawsuits removed those cases to federal court on January 19, 2018. The defendants in the Santa Cruz cases asserted that the plaintiffs’ claims implicated “uniquely federal interests” and were governed by federal common law. The defedants also asserted that the claims “attack federal policy decisions and threaten to upset longstanding federal-state relations, second-guess policy decisions made by Congress and the Executive Branch, and skew divisions of responsibility set forth in federal statutes and the United States Constitution” and therefore necessarily raised substantial and disputed questions of federal law. In addition, the defendants contended that the Clean Air Act completely preempted the claims and that the federal court had jurisdiction pursuant to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the federal officer removal statute, the federal enclave doctrine, and the bankruptcy removal statute.