DAVID BLACKMON: When ‘Investigations’ Become Advocacy In Louisiana’s Coastal Lawsuits

The long-running saga of the Louisiana coastal erosion lawsuits targeting an array of big oil companies took a new turn recently when a New Orleans public radio station filed a hit piece attacking a dozen federal judges for alleged conflicts of interests in hearing the cases. The station, FM 88.9 WWNO, provides details from an investigation it jointly conducted with Floodlight and Type Investigations.

The cases involve claims by parish governments in South Louisiana alleging that the oil industry’s activities in the region – spurred by the federal government to support the World War II effort – are the cause of the state’s coastal erosion problems. It’s an argument that ignores the far bigger cause: The state and federal efforts to control the natural flooding and silting processes by the Mississippi River that built the land over eons to begin with.

Back to WWNO’s investigation: Some might ask, what is Floodlight? Why it is, in its own words, “an independent, nonpartisan newsroom that investigates the corporations and political interests stalling climate action.” Its listed donors include many of what have become the Usual Suspects that fund far-left climate alarm NGOs: The Tides Foundation, The Sunrise Project, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Rockefeller Family Fund, to name just a few.

What about Type Investigations? It is an investigative arm of the leftwing activist Type Media Center, an NGO that “supports and trains left-of-center journalists and authors.”

What a coincidence!

It is hardly a surprise that NPR affiliate WWNO would not only quote from this investigation as if it is an unbiased source of actual “news,” but boast about having coordinated with these two groups. No wonder President Donald Trump and the GOP majorities in Congress worked so hard to defund NPR and its sister operation, PBS.

So, what are these supposed conflicts of interest of the federal judges whose motives are questioned here? Well, one of the judges “founded a law firm that had Texaco as a prominent client.” Horrors! WWNO offers no definition of what the word “prominent” means in this context, nor does it bother to mention the fact that Texaco has existed as a company for more than a quarter of a century.

Another of the judges smeared in this piece “collected $44,000 in mineral lease royalties” from companies not involved in these cases over the span of 12 years. That’s an average of less than $4,000 per year, not even $350 per month. WWNO wants you to think a federal judge’s vote could be influenced by such a paltry sum.

How ironic it is that an NPR affiliate in New Orleans would work with these leftwing NGOs to smear federal judges without mentioning the cozy relationships between the big Louisiana plaintiff firms pursuing the cases and the state court judges who’ve been deciding them.

What about the fact that several of the plaintiff firms contributed thousands of dollars directly to the campaign of State Judge Michael Clement, who issued a landmark ruling in April 2025 directing Chevron to pay $744 million to two Louisiana parishes? The WWNO hit piece discusses that case but makes no mention of Judge Clement or his own apparent conflict of interest.

Or what about the revelation in 2015 that a PAC created and funded by these firms supported the 2012 campaign of Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Jeff Hughes to the tune of $775,000? The same firms then opposed efforts by the oil company defendants in the coastal erosion cases to force Justice Hughes to recuse himself from ruling on their cases.

Next, as if to pile irony atop rank hypocrisy, the very same firms worked overtime last year to force Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito to recuse himself from the Supreme Court’s review of the coastal lawsuits because Alito once owned stock in ConocoPhillips. Again, no mention of that blatant double standard in the WWNO story.

If anything, Louisiana’s state court judges appear more definitively biased and politically compromised compared to the ambiguous claims about federal judges alleged in the WWNO story.

Spoiler: In the end, this advocacy hit piece came for naught on Friday, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision – without Alito’s participation – in favor of the defendant companies. The irony is so thick that even a knife can’t cut it.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/National Public Radio)