If confirmed to the Supreme Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett could decide the fate of a major pipeline case pushed by the fossil fuel lobbying organization where her father served as a top official. The case could limit states’ power to halt fossil fuel projects at a moment when scientists say climate change could render large swaths of the United States uninhabitable in our lifetime.

Barrett — who has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the validity of climate science — has been under intensifying pressure to commit to recusing herself from fossil fuel cases because of her father’s ties to the industry. As a lower-court judge, she had recused herself from cases involving Shell Oil, where her father worked as a top attorney. But she has since refused to commit to recusing from oil company cases, even though Shell currently has a major climate case before the high court.

In a separate but equally far-reaching case, PennEast Pipeline Company, LLC, v. New Jersey, the American Petroleum Institute (API) is pushing Supreme Court justices to intervene to overturn a lower court ruling that barred a fossil fuel corporation from using eminent domain to seize state-owned land in order to build a natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania to New Jersey.