Federal Judge threw out Trump's offshore drilling without deciding the question

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit challenging President Trump's reopening of more than 600 million acres of federal offshore waters to potential oil and gas leasing. The ruling turned on standing, not on whether he had the authority.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason signed the order Monday, finding the eleven environmental groups that sued had not shown a substantial risk of imminent harm. There are no pending applications for exploration in any waters outside the western and central Gulf, the court found. The dismissal was without prejudice, leaving the groups free to refile.

Gleason has taken up the underlying question before. In 2019 she ruled that a president exceeded his authority under Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act by revoking Obama-era withdrawals. An appeals court vacated that ruling as moot in 2021, and no binding decision stands.

President Biden used the same section in his final days in office. His Jan. 6, 2025 memoranda withdrew the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, the eastern Gulf, and 44 million acres of the Northern Bering Sea. Trump rescinded the withdrawals on his first day.

The groups argued the rescission was unlawful and would bring imminent environmental harm from exploration, including the seismic surveys that typically precede drilling. They include the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Oceana and the Natural Resources Defense Council, represented by Earthjustice. The State of Alaska and the American Petroleum Institute intervened on the government's side.

"Neither the President's policy priorities nor industry's expressions of interest could convert a speculative injury into a concrete one," said Adam Gustafson, principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Energy and Natural Resources Division.

The Justice Department release announcing the dismissal carried no response from the plaintiffs.

Western Alaska tribal organizations Kawerak, the Association of Village Council Presidents and the Bering Sea Elders Group said in January 2025 that tribes in their regions "have opposed offshore oil and gas activities since commercial leasing was first proposed in the early 1980s."

No lease sale is scheduled in the reopened waters. Six Cook Inlet sales sit on the federal schedule through 2040, in waters the withdrawals never covered.