A federal judge in Boston has ruled President Trump’s directive blocking new offshore wind permits unlawful.
The president issued the memorandum Jan. 20, the day he took office for his second term. It halted all permitting for wind energy, putting the industry in limbo.
On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris said the memo was arbitrary and gave no reasoned explanation. And she said federal agencies have a legal obligation to decide on permits within a reasonable time under the Administrative Procedure Act.
“Whatever level of explanation is required when deviating from longstanding agency practice, this is not it,” she wrote in a court order.
Trump’s memo said no federal agency would approve a wind project pending a comprehensive assessment of wind leasing and permitting, but the status of that review is unclear.
“The Agency Defendants have represented that the Comprehensive Assessment is ‘underway’ but have provided no information about its timeline or any anticipated end date,” Saris wrote.
The Department of the Interior, which regulates wind development, has not responded to a request for comment. Nor has the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the division of Interior that handles offshore wind leasing and permitting.
In New Bedford, an offshore wind port, Mayor Jon Mitchell, a former assistant U.S. attorney, said Saris made the right legal decision.
“The president's so-called wind memo violated a number of basic tenets of the Administrative Procedures Act,” he said. “I think Judge Saris' order was pretty clear on that front. … But that said, it's hard to know what practical effect this is going to have.”
The judge’s ruling may not change the Trump administration’s approach to offshore wind, he said. Permitting could move so slowly that no new permits are actually issued.
“The reality is that it still leaves open the possibility that administrative officials in the Bureau of Ocean Energy management and other federal agencies can just continue to slow-walk the process,” Mitchell said.
Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president of law and policy for the Conservation Law Foundation, which supports offshore wind, said it’s not clear what the Trump administration will have to do next.
“It is a little bit of a strange posture for a case, because you're challenging the direction of the administration to not do something,” she said. “So having that found illegal doesn't immediately translate into, ‘Now you have to do the following things.’”
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration in May. The Alliance for Clean Energy New York, an interest group comprised of private companies and nonprofit organizations, later joined the states as a plaintiff.
The judge could take additional action next week. A status conference on the case has been scheduled for Monday.
Mitchell said Saris could put the Trump administration on a timeclock to act on pending permits, but there is no guarantee the judge will do so.
