The first environmental lawsuit against the Trump administration was just filed
The legal challenge aims to protect hundreds of millions of acres of the outer continental shelf from oil and gas drilling.
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Groups have asked a court to block parts of President Donald Trump’s Day 1 executive order that opened hundreds of millions of acres of offshore land to oil and gas drilling, marking the first environmental lawsuit of the new president’s term.
The lawsuit filed in Alaska federal court said Trump exceeded his constitutional power when he signed the order revoking Biden-era protections for vast swaths of the U.S. coastline in the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans as well as the Gulf of Mexico.
Plaintiffs Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and others said the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act gives the president the authority to protect those areas, but doesn’t allow Trump to revoke existing protections.
The groups asked the court to block the Trump administration from opening up those areas to drilling, which they said will harm endangered whales, damage fragile coastal ecosystems, impact frontline communities and contribute to climate change.
They also said a court already agreed with their position when they sued Trump over his attempt to lift similar protections in his first term.
“We defeated Trump the first time he tried to roll back protections and sacrifice more of our waters to the oil industry,” Steve Mashuda, the managing attorney for Earthjustice, said in a statement. “We’re bringing this abuse of the law to the courts again.”
Devorah Ancel, a senior attorney at the Sierra Club, told Landmark that the lawsuit is just the first of many the environmental groups are prepared to file in the next four years, if necessary.
"Within a month of Donald Trump's current term, we are already filing the first environmental suit against his administration,” Ancel said. “It doesn't bode well for the rest of his term.”
The White House and Interior Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit is the first focused on environmental protection during Trump’s second term as president, and relates to roughly 625 million acres of offshore areas.
Trump has made expanding fossil fuel productions a key part of his second administration, and moved to revoke the offshore protections in a flurry of executive orders he signed in the first hours of his presidency.
Those orders declared an American energy emergency and encouraged more oil and gas extraction, though critics say fossil fuel production in the U.S. soared to record highs under the Biden administration.
As to the offshore leasing litigation, huge chunks of that total were protected by President Joe Biden in January, just days before he left office. Nearly 128 acres were originally protected by President Barack Obama but later reinstated by Biden after Trump revered them during his first term.
Trump’s first-term reversal led to the decision cited by the plaintiffs in the new lawsuit. The groups, separately, also asked a court this week to reinstate an order restricting drilling in those areas.