Nebraska Supreme Court Ruling Upholds Keystone XL Pipeline Route

The Nebraska Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s decision that nullified the controversial Keystone XL pipeline route through Nebraska Friday, meaning that Keystone XL once again has a legal route through Nebraska.

Four out of the seven judges on the Nebraska Supreme Court agreed with a district court’s February 2014 decision that Nebraska’s LB1161 law was unconstitutional, but according to Nebraska’s constitution, the court needed the agreement of a super majority — five out of the seven judges — to officially label the law as unconstitutional.

Nebraska’s LB1161 made it possible for pipeline companies, like TransCanada, to chose whether to submit their pipeline plans to the state Department of Environmental Quality, which would then bring the plans to Nebraska’s governor for final approval or rejection, or the state’s Public Service Commission, which had a stricter permitting process in place and didn’t depend on the governor for final approval.

In 2012, three Nebraska landowners — Randy Thompson, Susan Luebbe and Susan Dunavan — sued to challenge the law, saying it was went against the state’s constitution.  The district court sided with the landowners in February 2014, but the state Supreme Court’s ruling nullifies that decision.

“This appeal is not about the wisdom or necessity of constructing an oil pipeline but instead is limited to the issues of great public concern raised here:  which entity has constitutional authority to determine a pipeline carrier’s route and whether L.B. 1161 comports with the Nebraska Constitution’s provisions controlling this issue,” the Supreme Court judges write in the ruling.

But since just four members of the court, not five, found the law unconstitutional, the Court writes that “the citizens cannot get a binding decision from this court,” and the district court’s decision is vacated.

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