Conservation and environmentalist groups have sued US president Donald Trump and his administration over his order to roll back the ban on future oil and gas leasing.
The court battle against Trump is a two-parter. Several organisations are collectively challenging the order by the US president to revoke Biden’s withdrawal of certain areas of the ocean from future oil and gas leasing.
Another set of groups is requesting the court to reinstate a federal court ruling that invalidated an attempt by the first Trump administration to undo offshore protections put in place by former president Barack Obama.
In January, the Biden administration permanently protected the entire eastern U.S. Atlantic coast, from Canada to the southern tip of Florida, the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, Federal waters off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California, and an area in the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska. This equates to more than 2.5m sq km of federal waters which is an area equal to around a quarter of the total land mass of the United States.
Earlier in his administration, Biden also protected part of the Beaufort Sea and reinstated protections in the Chukchi Sea as well as canyon areas in the north and mid-Atlantic that Trump attempted to undo in his first administration.
Last week, Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing the National Energy Dominance Council focused on boosting the country’s production and export of fossil fuels. At the time, Trump revealed that Burgum was directed to undo Biden’s ban on future offshore oil drilling.
On Trump’s first day in office, he signed an executive order rescinding 68 executive orders and 11 presidential memoranda from the Biden administration, including those protecting ocean areas.
Now, environmentalist groups – Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Alaska Wilderness League, Oceana, Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Healthy Gulf, Center for Biological Diversity, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Natural Resource Defence Council, and Greenpeace – accuse the president of exceeding his constitutional and statutory authority by issuing a sweeping executive order revoking the protections.
Under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, enacted in 1953, the president has the authority to limit leasing activity. The groups argue that there is no provision in the act to allow a president to undo such withdrawals.
In 2017, an Alaska federal court shut down Trump’s attempt to revoke Barack Obama’s protections. US District Judge Sharon Gleason ruled that presidents have the power to remove certain lands from development but don’t have the power to revoke the removals of their predecessors, putting a stop to Trump’s plans.
The same groups that won that case filed a new motion asking Judge Gleason to reinstate her judgment against Trump, essentially blocking his attempt to reopen the protected waters to offshore drilling. The judgement was considered moot after Biden took office and rescinded the contested executive order.
Just like in 2017, the League of Conservation Voters, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Greenpeace and Alaska Wilderness League claim Trump’s executive order upended the core reasoning behind the court’s dismissal.
Currently, an executive order could be revoked only by an act of Congress which is one of the main reasons why the groups believe that Trump is overstepping his authority.
The Trump administration currently faces more than 70 lawsuits challenging the crackdown on illegal immigration and end birthright citizenship, rollback of legal protections for transgender people, and dramatically shrinking the federal government.
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