offshore wind

In one of those cases, a judge lifted the hold on construction, ruling that a lack of a sound justification for the hold made it “the height of arbitrary and capricious,” a legal standard that determines whether federal decision-making is acceptable under the Administrative Procedures Act. If this were a fictional story, that would be considered foreshadowing.

With no indication of how long the comprehensive assessment would take, 17 states sued to lift the hold on permitting. They were joined by the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, which represents companies that build wind projects or feed their supply chain. Both the plaintiffs and the agencies that were sued asked for summary judgment in the case.

The first issue Judge Saris addressed is standing: Are the states suffering appreciable harm from the suspension of wind projects? She noted that they would receive tax revenue from the projects, that their citizens should see reduced energy costs following their completion, and that the projects were intended to contribute to their climate goals, thus limiting harm to their citizens. At one point, Saris even referred to the government’s attempts to claim the parties lacked standing as “tilting at windmills.”

The government also argued that the suspension wasn’t a final decision—that would come after the review—and thus didn’t fall under the Administrative Procedures Act. But Saris ruled that the decision to suspend all activity pending the rule was the end of a decision-making process and was not being reconsidered by the government, so it qualified.

Because Trump told us to

With those basics out of the way, Saris turned to the meat of the case, which included a consideration of whether the agencies had been involved with any decision-making at all. “The Agency Defendants contend that because they ‘merely followed’ the Wind Memo ‘as the [Wind Memo] itself commands,’ the Wind Order did not constitute a ‘decision’ and therefore no reasoned explanation was required,” her ruling says. She concludes that precedent at the circuit court level blocks this defense, as it would mean that agencies would be exempt from the Administrative Procedures Act whenever the president told them to do anything.