Opponents of controversial Maryland power line ask Supreme Court to hear their case

After a legal challenge to a controversial Maryland power line came up short this year, opponents of the project are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider their case.

A group of Maryland landowners filed a petition Thursday before the high court, asking justices to hear their case over the power line developer’s right to survey its route on the properties of landowners opposed to the project.

Last year, a federal judge allowed the developer, the New Jersey-based Public Service Enterprise Group, to proceed with those surveys on the land of nonconsenting landowners. A Virginia appeals court upheld that verdict in August.

The power line, called the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project, would cut through 67 miles of rural land in Baltimore, Carroll and Frederick counties. A $424 million venture, the Piedmont Reliability line has drawn intense backlash in part because it would move electricity from Pennsylvania to the doorstep of Northern Virginia, where energy-hungry data centers are putting strain on the regional grid.

Along much of the route, landowners have attempted to resist surveys, even prompting PSEG to seek protection in the work from the U.S. Marshals Service.

“These landowners have stood together to defend one of the most fundamental rights of property ownership: the right to decide who can enter their land,” Joanne Frederick, president of Stop MPRP, said in a statement Thursday. “They never imagined that protecting their homes, farms, and communities would lead them to petition the United States Supreme Court.”

The bar for the Supreme Court to accept a case is extremely high. Justices receive thousands of petitions each term but typically hear arguments in about 80 of them, according to the high court.

The Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project, which would cross some 400 properties across the three counties, remains in the early stages of the state’s permitting process. The region’s grid operator, which hired PSEG to build the project, has argued the line needs to be in place to avoid possible blackouts across its multistate system.

PSEG spokesperson Bill Smith declined to comment on the Supreme Court petition Friday but said the vast majority of surveys are finished and “only a handful” remain.

The New Jersey company applied for a project permit from the Maryland Public Service Commission in late 2024. To proceed with permitting, however, Maryland regulators require the company to conduct environmental surveys — work the company has offered some property owners one-time payments of $1,000 to complete.

The landowners are represented in their petition at no cost by Pacific Legal Foundation, a national public interest law firm with experience arguing cases before the Supreme Court. The firm has brought 21 cases to the Supreme Court and won 18, according to its website.

Much of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision rested on a view that PSEG surveyors “likely” held the authority to force their way onto properties along the route, a government-entrusted power known as eminent domain. Although states allow for the delegation of eminent domain to private companies for survey work, the petition argues that PSEG had not received final approval to invoke this authority and may not be able to as a newcomer to Maryland.

Attorneys for the landowners said this interpretation highlights a split in how federal appeals courts have interpreted the delegation of eminent domain.

“What may appear to be a procedural quirk has immediate and devastating practical consequences going to the very heart of the fundamental right of private property ownership,” attorneys wrote in their filing.