WASHINGTON- When is a case about a pipeline about more than the pipeline? When it produces a 5-4 Supreme Court decision with a surprising mix of conservative and liberal Justices on both sides. Their opinions reflect disagreements from the founding era over the role and power of the federal government.

Pipeline developer PennEast has been seeking to build a 116-mile pipeline between Pennsylvania and New Jersey since 2014. The Natural Gas Act of 1938 delegates the federal government’s eminent domain power to private parties once the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) certifies a pipeline.

PennEast had negotiated the route with New Jersey politicians, but Gov. Phil Murphy pulled a switcheroo and invoked state sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment to block the company from building on state-owned land. The Eleventh Amendment bars states from being sued in federal court by private citizens of other states. New Jersey argued that FERC’s eminent domain delegation doesn’t apply to state land. Chief Justice John Roberts along with Justices Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Brett Kavanaugh disagreed.

Both sides make compelling cases based on the Constitution’s structure. Justice Amy Coney Barrett writes in a dissent joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch that the “Constitution limits the means by which the Federal Government can impose its will on the States” and sovereign immunity was a “deliberately chosen feature of the constitutional design.”

The 5-4 ruling is good for U.S. energy development, but it also shows that the Court with its two new Justices is far from a lockstep ideological battering ram. The Justices are seriously grappling with serious constitutional issues, with often surprising majority coalitions.

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