The District of Columbia and 17 states — including New York, Arizona, Massachusetts, California, Colorado, and Illinois — sued the Trump administration Monday over its attempts to stop wind energy developments across the US.
The states argue that by signing a presidential memorandum on his first day in office that halted federal approvals for wind energy projects, President Trump impeded their ability to reduce pollution and provide residents with cheap electricity. Billions of dollars of investments they’ve made in infrastructure, workforce development, and supply chains for wind energy are at risk, they contend.
The suit claims that Trump has attacked wind energy in an “arbitrary and capricious” way. It invokes the Administrative Procedure Act that allows courts to deem federal agency actions unlawful if they’re found to be “arbitrary” and “capricious.”
The Trump administration, meanwhile, is framing the lawsuit as a partisan attack. “Instead of working with President Trump to unleash American energy and lower prices for American families, Democrat Attorneys General are using lawfare to stop the President’s popular energy agenda,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in an email to The Verge. “Americans in blue states should not have to pay the price of the Democrats’ radical climate agenda.”
The states also claim that the Trump administration is abruptly reversing longstanding policy after federal agencies have already assessed the potential benefits and risks of wind energy projects. Trump’s presidential memorandum calls for a new review of federal permitting processes and the purported environmental and economic “necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases.” The plaintiffs allege that the Trump administration is failing to follow existing environmental rules regulating industry, including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.