You Call It Human Rights Abuses; I Call It A Political Question. Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off.

An internal struggle in Colombia has been ongoing since the 1960s involving guerrilla forces trying to overpower the Colombian government. In 1986, oil extraction of one of the largest oil fields in the country began, and the first 110 miles of pipeline ran through especially volatile guerrilla territory. In 2002, because of Colombia’s inability to secure the pipeline on its own and its importance to U.S. energy security, the U.S. created a $99 million aid program to secure the pipeline. In 2004, after both the U.S. and Occidental Petroleum’s Colombian subsidiary provided funding for government troops, the troops murdered three union leaders not far from the pipeline. Seven years later, plaintiffs, family members of the slain workers, filed suit against Occidental Petroleum in federal court in California under 28 U.S.C. § 1350 [Alien Tort Statute], claiming Occidental hired the troops, fully aware of their human rights abuses. Both the federal trial and appeals courts concluded Occidental’s partial funding of the pipeline security program is inextricably bound to an inherently political question of the United States and thus, was nonjusticiable [not capable of being decided under legal principles]. (Marina v. Occidental Petroleum Corporation (Ninth Cir.; December 15, 2014) 774 F.3d 544.)