League of Conservation Voters v. Trump (Offshore Leasing Ban)

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An aerial view of two bowhead whales swimming through the ocean surrounded by icebergs on either side
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Amelia Brower/Alaska Fisheries Science Center/NOAA Fisheries Service

The protected areas of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf are still essentially undeveloped and undamaged by the oil industry, and they host rich webs of wildlife that are acutely vulnerable to oil spills and the impacts of climate change, from belugas, walruses, and polar bears to sea turtles and various shellfish species. Exploration and drilling in these areas would harm marine life and put them at risk from devastating spills—and these actions could have a severe climate impact, locking in fossil fuel reliance for decades to come when we need to be rapidly transitioning to clean energy.

Yet, on the first day of his second term, President Trump issued an executive order revoking the permanent protections for more than 100 million acres of irreplaceable marine habitat, including 26 undersea canyons in the Atlantic ocean and the vast majority of the fragile U.S. Arctic Ocean, including parts of the Beaufort, Chukchi, and Bering seas. These safeguards—which were first adopted by President Obama, reversed by President Trump in his first term, and reinstated by President Biden—had permanently withdrawn these ocean areas from all future oil and gas leasing under Section 12(a) of Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA). 

In response, NRDC and our partners filed a legal challenge on February 19, 2025. On behalf of a broad coalition (including the League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club, Alaska Wilderness League, Defenders of Wildlife, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Center for Biological Diversity, and Greenpeace), NRDC and Earthjustice filed a motion in an Alaska federal court to reinstate the successful ruling we obtained in League of Conservative Voters v. Trump during Trump’s first term (see below "League of Conservation Voters v. Trump, 2017"), where the district court ruled that Trump’s 2017 reversal was unlawful. 

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Background

Bering, Beaufort, and Chukchi seas, Alaska

In Alaska’s Bering, Beaufort, and Chukchi seas, the federal waters in the Arctic Ocean provide habitat to a rich array of unique wildlife species including polar bears, walruses, whales, seals, and numerous other mammals, birds, and fish, some of them classified as threatened or endangered. Some of these animals also support thriving Indigenous Alaska Native cultural and subsistence activities.  

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean hosts magnificent undersea canyons, some of which are 100 miles long and deeper than the Grand Canyon. Each canyon hosts a rich and unique assembly of marine wildlife. They support cold-water corals that are thousands of years old, in addition to multitudes of whale species, bluefin tuna, sea turtles, and seabirds. The surrounding seafloor and continental slope break is a vast biodiversity hot spot and provides a migration corridor for endangered North Atlantic right whales that connects feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine to calving areas offshore Florida. 

In 2015 and 2016, then president Barack Obama permanently banned oil and gas leasing in 98 percent of the U.S. Arctic Ocean and parts of the Atlantic Ocean—roughly 128 million acres in all. Environmental and Alaska Native advocacy groups and communities all along the Eastern Seaboard cheered this as a major victory in the fight for ocean conservation and climate justice. The protected areas of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf are still undeveloped and undamaged by the oil industry, and they host rich webs of wildlife that are acutely vulnerable to oil spills and the impacts of climate change, including belugas, bowhead whales, and walruses. Exploration and drilling in these areas would harm marine mammals and threaten devastating spills, and these actions could have a severe climate impact, locking in fossil fuel reliance for decades to come when we need to be rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuel dependence.

And yet, in 2017, President Donald Trump issued an executive order attempting to undo Obama’s permanent protections and open these ocean areas to expedited oil and gas leasing. He claimed to be acting pursuant to Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), but in fact, Section 12(a) authorizes the President only to confer protections from leasing on areas of the Outer Continental Shelf—not to revoke them—effecting permanent bans unless and until Congress chooses to reverse them.

Attorneys from NRDC and Earthjustice filed suit in Alaska federal court, challenging Trump’s action on behalf of a broad coalition: League of Conservation Voters, NRDC, Sierra Club, Alaska Wilderness League, Defenders of Wildlife, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL), Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, and the Wilderness Society.

In 2018, the district court upheld our right to sue Trump against a barrage of government objections. Then in 2019, the district court ruled that Trump’s executive order was unlawful, effectively reinstating Obama’s withdrawals and prohibiting leasing in these vulnerable areas. The Trump administration—supported by the State of Alaska and the American Petroleum Institute (API)—appealed the district court’s decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Ninth Circuit heard oral argument on June 5, 2020. 

While we were awaiting the Ninth Circuit’s decision, Trump’s presidency ended. President Biden, on his first day in office, issued an executive order revoking Trump’s order in its entirety. All parties agreed that, because President Obama’s Arctic and Atlantic withdrawals are valid and in effect now regardless of the outcome of the appeals, the appeals are moot. The Ninth Circuit agreed and dismissed the appeals as moot on April 13, 2021. We welcomed the Ninth Circuit’s recognition that all 128 million acres of sensitive offshore areas protected by President Obama remain protected without the need for continued litigation.

Case documents

Case Documents

LCV plaintiffs' 2025 Rule 60(b) motion (LCV v. Trump, 2025) (PDF)
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Ocean Wildlife Fossil Fuels

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