## Facts

- The Deepwater Horizon drilling unit suffered a blowout at the Macondo well on the Outer Continental Shelf about fifty miles off Louisiana, causing a large oil discharge into the Gulf of Mexico.
- Eleven coastal Louisiana parishes sued BP and other entities involved in the drilling operation.
- The parishes sought civil penalties under the Louisiana Wildlife Protection Statute for alleged injury to wildlife and aquatic life resulting from the spill.
- Defendants removed the actions to federal court as part of the Eastern District of Louisiana MDL proceedings for Deepwater Horizon litigation.
- The district court denied remand and dismissed the parishes’ claims, concluding federal law governed and preempted the requested state-law penalties.

## Issues

1. Whether the parishes’ state-law penalty suits were removable to federal court under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), 43 U.S.C. § 1349(b)(1).
2. Whether the Clean Water Act (CWA), particularly 33 U.S.C. § 1321 as interpreted in *International Paper Co. v. Ouellette*, and the Oil Pollution Act (OPA), including 33 U.S.C. § 2718, preempted the parishes’ state-law wildlife civil-penalty claims.

## Decision

- The Fifth Circuit affirmed the denial of remand, holding OCSLA’s jurisdictional grant covered claims “arising out of, or in connection with” operations on the Outer Continental Shelf.
- The Fifth Circuit affirmed dismissal, holding the CWA’s comprehensive pollution-control and penalty structure preempted the parishes’ attempt to impose additional civil penalties under Louisiana law for the same discharge.
- The court rejected the argument that OPA’s savings clause preserved these parish penalty claims, concluding OPA did not displace the CWA preemption framework recognized in *Ouellette*.

## Legal Principles

- OCSLA provides broad federal jurisdiction over cases connected to Outer Continental Shelf exploration and development operations, supporting removal even when a complaint pleads only state-law causes of action.
- The CWA establishes a comprehensive federal scheme for regulating and penalizing discharges of oil and hazardous substances, limiting overlapping state or local penalty regimes that conflict with federal enforcement.
- OPA’s savings clause may preserve certain state-law remedies, but it does not authorize state or local civil penalties that parallel or interfere with federal penalty provisions governing the same pollution event.
- Where uniform federal regulation and enforcement are central to the statutory design, state or local penalty actions that create duplicative or inconsistent liability are preempted.

## Conclusion

The Fifth Circuit held that the parishes’ wildlife-penalty suits were properly removed under OCSLA and that federal pollution statutes preempted their effort to recover state-law civil penalties for harms alleged from the Deepwater Horizon spill.


In re Deepwater Horizon (Louisiana Parishes), 745 F.3d 157 (5th Cir. 2014)