4/23/2026

UPPER MICHIGAN / N. WISC  (AP) — The Supreme Court has sided with Michigan in ruling that the state’s lawsuit seeking to shut down a section of an aging pipeline beneath a Great Lakes channel will stay in state court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for a unanimous court Wednesday that the Enbridge energy company waited too long to try to move the case to federal court. The case is part of a messy legal dispute about a pipeline that has carried crude oil and natural gas liquids between Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario, since 1953. Enbridge argues the case affects U.S. and Canadian trade.  The pipeline is at the center of a separate legal dispute in Wisconsin as well. A federal judge in Madison last summer gave Enbridge three years to shut down part of Line 5 that runs across the Bad River Band of Lake Superior’s reservation. The company has appealed the shutdown order to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but it started work in February to reroute the line around the reservation.  The Bad River and environmental groups have filed a state lawsuit seeking to halt the work, arguing regulators have underestimated the damage the reroute construction will cause. That case also is pending.