Greg Abbott Creates A Texas Court System To Protect Polluters

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Greg Abbott, the lunatic who has been holding the people of Texas hostage for almost a decade, has repaid the millions of dollars in campaign contributions he has gotten from fossil fuel companies by creating special courts just for them that are stocked top to bottom with people who have represented oil and gas companies. According to The Lever, the new courts began protecting the interests of the fossil fuel industry from claims or environmental damage on September 1, 2024. The judges for the new court are not elected. Instead, they have been handpicked over the last two months by Greg Abbott personally. They are to serve two-year terms, which means if they dare to rule against the whims of the governor, they can be dumped overboard fairly quickly by someone who will shut up and do what they are told.

Texas Creates New Business Courts To Protect Fossil Fuel Interests

The courts consist of 11 regional business courts and a new statewide court of appeals to hear appellate litigation. They are expected to have immediate impacts on environmental cases in the state. As Public Health Watch reported last month, a suite of cases involving state environmental authorities will now be transferred from a generally liberal appeals court to the state’s new Fifteenth Court of Appeals, created to oversee the business courts. There, these cases will be decided by a panel of conservative judges historically friendly to industry — particularly oil and gas interests, which are a powerful political force in Texas. “Greg Abbott created a boutique court for corporations where he, not the voters, gets to pick the judges,” said Adrian Shelley, the director of the Texas office at Public Citizen, a progressive advocacy organization. “It’s that simple.”

The judge that Abbott selected to head the new appellate court, Scott Brister, has since 2009 worked at a law firm known for its specialty in fossil fuel litigation. While an attorney there, he led the defense of BP in litigation over the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill, one of the worst environmental disasters in history, that released more than 100 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Before then, while serving on the Texas Supreme Court, Brister helped throw out a major guilty verdict against ExxonMobil for allegedly poisoning a town’s water supply.

A jury originally awarded $7 million in damages to the plaintiffs in that case, but in 2003, Brister and his fellow justices claimed that the scientific evidence was not robust enough to support the conclusion that the illnesses contracted by the town’s residents were connected with Exxon’s pollution. The court reversed the verdict on the company’s appeal, and the plaintiffs received nothing. Fans of John Grisham may see that case as a real life example of the fictional shenanigans wealthy corporations employ to shield themselves from liability for turning the environment into a cesspool in his book The Appeal. No matter how horrific the plot of that book is, the reality is far worse.

The business court’s new judges also include Republican Scott K. Field, who as attorney in 2009 represented Chevron in the company’s attempt to recoup $170,000 in pension payouts to a former employee. Field also worked for a litany of major businesses in Texas cases, as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest corporate lobbying group that has strong ties to the oil and gas industry. After being elected in 2012 to the Texas Third Court of Appeals, which handles many environmental cases, Field ruled in favor of developers accused of destroying protected sand dunes, and in another case, against environmentalists who sued the state, requesting it consider regulating greenhouse gas emissions. In 2018, Field lost his seat as part of a Democratic sweep of the appellate court. Now, as part of the business court, he will once again preside over many environmental cases. Critics have claimed that Abbott is using the new courts to circumvent Democrat controlled benches.

With Liberty And Justice For Some

Field told The Lever he was sympathetic to concerns about the backgrounds of judges on the bench. “I understand people being concerned, because we live in a time where everyone assumes people are political by nature and are going to go a certain direction just because of who they might have represented in the past. But really good lawyers don’t think that way. You give someone due process in court no matter who they are.”

He said he didn’t believe the new appellate court would be a death knell for environmental cases. “I don’t think it should be any different. If you have judges with the right judicial philosophy, where they’re just applying the law as written, really, a judge’s personal views, or especially political views, should never come into play.” Some readers may recall that John Roberts, the activist chief judge of the US Supreme Court used similar language while explaining that judges are like umpires in baseball who just call balls and strikes. Horse puckey. Roberts and his colleagues have taken a sledgehammer to settled legal precedent to rip open a gash in American jurisprudence unprecedented in the history of the nation.

All told, The Lever found at least 5 of Abbott’s 13 appointees to the business courts, including all three appointees to the appellate court, have worked on behalf of fossil fuel companies. Others include April Farris, a Federalist Society member who defended a Texas natural gas pipeline company during her time in private practice; Stacy Sharp, a San Antonio attorney who represented BP in the months after the Deepwater Horizon disaster; and Jerry Bullard, a lawyer who worked for a fossil fuel exploration company as an attorney in 2015. Abbott also appointed judges straight from his own administration. His former general counsel, Patrick K. Sweeten, and a former deputy attorney general in his administration, Grant Dorfman, will both now serve as business court judges.

Unequal Rights

Last year, Texas lawmakers, following the dictates of Greg Abbott, proposed the state create a new system of business courts to handle major corporate cases. Many states have such a legal system, which proponents say can ensure that judges with appropriate expertise oversee complex business cases. Delaware’s historically corporate-friendly Court of Chancery is just one example. Readers will recall that a chancery judge in Delaware invalidated Elon Musk’s gargantuan pay package as being manifestly unfair to shareholders. Musk, probably with knowledge of the plan Abbott had up his sleeve, immediately moved Tesla’s state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas, where he can be sure that he will prevail in any litigation brought against him or Tesla. It’s always comforting to know the fix is in.

The Texas model for its business courts is different from many other states’ business courts, legal experts told The Lever. The judges are appointed personally by the governor with virtually no oversight from the legislative branch. Those judges serve 12-year terms in Delaware and 6-year terms in Nevada but only 2-year terms in Texas, making it easy for Abbott or his successor to quickly replace a judge who doesn’t rule as expected. Abbott has been pushing for Texas to create such a system for years. “The judge essentially doesn’t have the last say if who’s on the court can be quickly changed,” Anne Tucker, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law, told The Lever in February. “Particularly if there’s an unpopular — even if legally correct — outcome.” In the words of one local corporate law firm, the courts were designed to “preserve Texas’ business friendly culture.”

For the state’s oil and gas interests, the new business court system marks a major win. The fossil fuel lobby in Texas was a key supporter of the courts during deliberations in the legislature in March 2023, alongside many other business interests. The Texas Oil & Gas Association, a lobbying group representing fossil fuel interests, advocated for the bill, and Energy Transfer, one of the biggest oil pipeline companies in the country, testified in favor of the legislation.

Now fossil fuel interests in Texas have access to a legal system that they helped build. Once they open their doors, the courts are poised to start deciding major environmental cases in the state, particularly appellate cases that will quickly be transferred to the new Fifteenth Court of Appeals. The new appellate court, in addition to presiding over cases appealed from the business courts, will now oversee most cases brought against the state of Texas, including state agencies responsible for issuing environmental permits. Unlike the business court judges, the judges appointed by the governor for the new appellate court will subsequently run for statewide election for 6-year terms.

A Court To Protect The Rights Of Polluters

The makeup of the new appellate court, one national law firm noted in a recent report, is a “significant contrast with the all Democratic Third Court of Appeals,” which previously heard many environmental cases in Texas. Those cases are now headed to a bench stacked with conservative judges. One such case, which was brought against state regulators by several environmental groups in 2022, is challenging a troubled Houston oil pipeline company’s plans to expand a shipping channel in southeastern Texas. The advocates warn that the project would “deeply impact” the estuaries the channel runs through and pollute the air of surrounding neighborhoods. They are trying to use the case to strike down a long standing policy held by Texas regulators that empowers polluters.

Another case, backed by the National Wildlife Federation, is attempting to prevent billions of gallons of publicly owned water in the Guadalupe River Basin from being put up for sale to private buyers. The environmentalists argued the state river authority’s plan to sell the water could cause vast environmental harm to the river. A lower court judge agreed and revoked the permit for the sale. The appeal from that decision now heads to the new appellate court. That court will also consider a case that is trying to block ExxonMobil’s planned expansion of a chemical plant on the Texas Gulf Coast. The fossil fuel industry will now have the benefit of a court system designed specifically for it, staffed by so-called judges who are mostly all former lawyers for the industry. It is the perfect “heads we win; tails you lose” con job.

Corruption Writ Large In The Lone Star State

Meanwhile, Abbott continues to rake in millions in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. “You can buy political influence in a very straightforward way in Texas,” said Adrian Shelley, the Public Citizen director. For those who are paying attention, this is exactly the kind of unequal justice we can expect all across America if there is a second Trump presidency. You have been warned. Please vote wisely.

Hat tip to Dan Allard