Green Groups Sue Trump Over Proposed Oil and Gas Drilling in Protected Waters

Conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Oceana, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council, filed two separate lawsuits against the Trump administration on Wednesday.

Both complaints focus on the administration’s moves to open more of the nation’s waters to drilling for oil and gas.

“President Trump’s executive order would roll back millions of acres of ocean protection, jeopardizing our coastal economies and the people who rely on healthy, thriving oceans,” said Joseph Gordon, Oceana campaign director, in a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity. “Leaders in both political parties, thousands of businesses, and millions of Americans support permanently protecting our coasts from offshore drilling. We are confident the court will continue to uphold the bipartisan tradition of presidents safeguarding these coastlines and protecting the people who live and work among them.”

#BREAKING: We’re taking the Trump administration to court! Oceana, alongside other environmental groups, is challenging President Trump's attempts to revoke ocean protections & open up millions of acres to offshore drilling. More 👉 oceana.ly/3EMOhSt

[image or embed]

— Oceana (@oceana.bsky.social) February 20, 2025 at 12:08 PM

One group of plaintiffs is challenging a Trump executive order to repeal the protection of hundreds of millions of acres of United States coastal waters from oil and gas leasing executed by former President Joe Biden during his final days in office, a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity said.

The other group is requesting that the court reinstate a prior federal court ruling invalidating the first Trump administration’s attempt to undo offshore drilling protections implemented during the Obama administration.

We're suing the Trump administration over an illegal order to revoke offshore oil drilling protections from most U.S. coastlines. “A nearly identical effort by the first Trump administration to expand drilling was stopped by Earthjustice in federal court.”

[image or embed]

— Earthjustice (@earthjustice.bsky.social) February 19, 2025 at 5:07 PM

“We defeated Trump the first time he tried to roll back protections and sacrifice more of our waters to the oil industry. We’re bringing this abuse of the law to the courts again,” said Steve Mashuda, managing attorney for oceans at Earthjustice, in a press release from the nonprofit legal organization. “Trump is illegally trying to take away protections vital to coastal communities that rely on clean, healthy oceans for safe living conditions, thriving economies, and stable ecosystems.”

Biden invoked the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to withdraw areas off the Atlantic, eastern Gulf, Pacific and Alaska from the possibility of oil and gas leasing. Eight other administrations, including Trump’s first, have done the same.

We filed our first lawsuit of the year against the Trump administration for revoking protections that cover more than 625 million acres of the ocean. When Trump tried to hand over our oceans to Big Oil in 2017, we sued—and won. We’re headed to court to fight back again.

[image or embed]

— NRDC (@nrdc.org) February 19, 2025 at 3:35 PM

The law does not, however, permit a president from revoking withdrawals by prior presidents. A federal court confirmed this before, when Trump tried to undo protections for parts of the Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean set by the Obama administration.

“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,” said Kristen Monsell, the Center for Biological Diversity’s oceans legal director. “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 lawsuits will likely be the first of many filed by environmental groups against the current administration, reported The Guardian. In his first month in office, Trump has frozen funds for climate-related spending programs while attempting to roll back many of Biden’s environmental protections.

“The Arctic Ocean has been protected from US drilling for nearly a decade, and those protections have been affirmed by the federal courts,” said Sierra Weaver, a senior attorney for Defenders of Wildlife, a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits, as The Guardian reported. “Though these coastlines have been protected, the administration is showing no restraint in seeking to hand off some of our most fragile and pristine landscapes for the oil industry’s profit.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Greenpeace USA (@greenpeaceusa)