Enbridge Energy, LP v. Nessel, Docket No. 24-783
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A company that waits nearly three years to move its lawsuit to federal court cannot simply ask a judge to let it slide. The Supreme Court just made a unanimous decision to make that crystal clear. The decision matters because it affects how quickly cases get resolved and which courts get to decide them, but more importantly, it shows the Court is willing to enforce rules strictly, even when a company has good reasons for breaking them.
The Case: A Pipeline and a Missed Deadline
Enbridge operates Line 5, a 645-mile petroleum pipeline running beneath Michigan's Straits of Mackinac. Michigan's Attorney General sued in state court in 2019 to shut it down. When Enbridge was notified on July 12, 2019, a 30-day clock started ticking. The company had one month to move the case to federal court. It did not.
Instead, Enbridge fought in state court for months. Only after a related lawsuit by Michigan's Governor moved to federal court did Enbridge try to move the Attorney General's case too. By then, nearly three years had passed. The Attorney General asked the judge to send the case back to state court. The trial judge said no, but an appeals court reversed that decision. The Supreme Court agreed with the appeals court.
What Enbridge Argued
Enbridge made a straightforward pitch: the 30-day deadline is not a jurisdictional rule, meaning it does not determine whether a court has the power to hear a case at all. Because of that, Enbridge argued, judges should be able to use their general fairness powers to excuse a missed deadline. The company essentially asked the Court to create an escape hatch for companies that miss the deadline but have good reasons.
What Michigan's Attorney General Argued
The Attorney General countered on two fronts. First, she said the fairness exception Enbridge wanted only applies to deadlines that kill a case entirely. This deadline just determines which court hears the case, not whether it gets heard at all. Second, even if fairness principles could apply, the removal law is so carefully structured that Congress clearly did not want judges inventing new exceptions on their own.
The Court's Decision
Justice Sotomayor wrote for all nine justices. The Court sided with the Attorney General. The Court did not need to decide whether fairness principles could ever apply to this deadline. Instead, it focused on what Congress actually intended.
The Court found three key reasons Congress did not want judges making exceptions. First, the law uses firm language: removal notices "shall be filed within 30 days." Second, Congress already wrote in specific exceptions for specific situations, like cases involving foreign governments or mass casualty accidents. If Congress wanted judges to create additional exceptions, why would it have written these specific ones? Third, the whole point of removal law is efficiency and finality. Allowing judges to excuse missed deadlines case by case would create endless uncertainty about which court is handling a case.
Clarifying Judicial Fairness Interpretations
Here is the practical reality: if you are a defendant and you want to move a case from state court to federal court, you have 30 days from the moment you are notified. That is it. There is no escape hatch. There is no judge who can say, "Well, you had a good reason for waiting three years, so I will let it slide."
This decision clarifies something important about how courts work. A deadline can be non-jurisdictional, meaning missing it does not automatically destroy a court's power to act, and still be completely inflexible. Think of it like this: missing the deadline does not mean the case disappears. It just means you cannot move it to federal court. The case stays where it is.
The fact that all nine justices agreed shows the Court sees this as a clear rule, even in a high-stakes case involving an international pipeline. When the stakes are that high and the Court is still unanimous, it signals the rule is settled law.