Climate organisations to sue Trump for scrapping environmental policies

Today, groups concerned about the threats from offshore drilling filed the first environmental legal challenge against the new Trump administration. 

One group is challenging an illegal order by President Trump to revoke former President Biden’s withdrawal of vulnerable areas of the ocean from future oil and gas leasing. 

Another set of groups is taking a related action asking a court to reinstate a federal court ruling that invalidated an attempt by the first Trump administration to undo Obama-era offshore protections. 

President Trump has
attempted to open nearly the entire Arctic Ocean to drilling by reviving his first-term order.
President Biden protected areas off the Eastern Gulf, Atlantic, Pacific, and Alaska coasts by invoking his authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. 

The law authorises the president to withdraw offshore areas from oil and gas leasing, as eight administrations, including the first Trump administration, have routinely done. 

However, the law does not authorise the President to revoke the withdrawals of prior presidents, which a federal court confirmed
when Trump attempted to undo Obama-era protections for the Arctic Ocean and portions of the Atlantic oceans during his first term.

In the new case, Earthjustice is representing Oceana, Center for Biological Diversity, the Surfrider Foundation, Greenpeace, Healthy Gulf, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Alaska Wilderness League, and Turtle Island Restoration Network. Plaintiffs Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council are each representing themselves.

“We shouldn’t have to file this suit again because President Trump already lost the last time he tried this,” said
Gene Karpinski, President of League of Conservation Voters which led a coalition of groups’ successful challenge in the first Trump administration. 

“We are signalling to Congress, the President and the people of this country our commitment to defending already-protected coastal communities and waters from risky and dirty offshore drilling.”

“Trump’s putting our oceans, marine wildlife and coastal communities at risk of devastating oil spills and we need the courts to rein in his utter contempt for the law,” added Kristen Monsell, Oceans Legal Director
at the Center for Biological Diversity. 

“Offshore oil drilling is destructive from start to finish. Opening up more public waters to the oil industry for short-term gain and political points is a reprehensible and irresponsible way to manage our precious ocean ecosystems.”

“The law is clear: once a President permanently withdraws ocean areas from oil and gas leasing, those protections cannot simply be undone,” concluded Christy Goldfuss, Executive Director at NRDC.

“With the Trump administration aggressively dismantling environmental safeguards, the courts will be a crucial backstop. When Trump puts polluters over the law, we’ll see him in court.”