The supreme court on Wednesday sided with Michigan in ruling that the state’s lawsuit seeking to shut down a section of an ageing pipeline beneath a Great Lakes channel will stay in state court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for a unanimous court that the Enbridge energy company waited too long to try to move the case to federal court.
The case is part of a messy legal dispute about a pipeline that has moved crude oil and natural gas liquids between Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario, since 1953. Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general, sued in state court in June 2019 seeking to void the easement that allows Enbridge to operate a 4.5-mile (6.4km) section of pipeline under the straits of Mackinac, which link Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
Nessel, a Democrat, won a restraining order shutting down the pipeline from Ingham county judge James Jamo in June 2020, although Enbridge was allowed to continue operations after meeting safety requirements. Enbridge moved the lawsuit into federal court in 2021, arguing it affects US and Canadian trade.
But a three-judge panel from the sixth US circuit court of appeals sent the case back to Jamo in June 2024, finding that the company missed a 30-day deadline to change jurisdictions. The pipeline at issue is called Line 5.
Concerns over the section beneath the straits rupturing and causing a catastrophic spill have been growing since 2017, when Enbridge engineers revealed they had known about gaps in the section’s protective coating since 2014. A boat anchor damaged the section in 2018, intensifying fears of a spill.
