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President Donald Trump speaks with reporters in the Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo/Alex Brandon).
A coalition of 15 states is suing the Trump administration for declaring a national “energy emergency” earlier this year “despite the absence of any emergency,” according to their federal complaint.
Led by attorneys general in Washington state and California, the coalition challenges the president’s “fake” energy emergency that he declared on Jan. 20 under the National Emergencies Act, according to a Friday press release. They accuse the Trump administration of declaring the emergency in an unlawful attempt to “bypass critical ecological, historical, and cultural resource review” processes and proper permitting procedures for hundreds of fossil fuel projects that are being proposed “in and around the nation” — and “presumably many more in the future,” per the complaint.
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The states say that to date, the use of emergency procedures were limited to “projects necessary during or in the aftermath of natural or human-made disasters,” like hurricanes, flooding and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which the coalition cites.
“But now, prodded onto the shakiest of limbs by the President’s unsupported and unlawful Executive Order, multiple federal agencies now seek to broadly employ these emergency procedures in non-emergency situations,” the complaint says.
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Filed Friday by the state AGs — all Democrats — the “energy emergency” lawsuit was brought in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
The other states suing are Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.
The AGs are targeting the president’s Jan. 20 executive order, “Declaring a National Energy Emergency,” which they say commands the heads of executive departments and federal agencies, including the United States Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps), the Department of Interior (Interior), and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), to issue permits and other approvals “necessary for energy-related projects on an expedited and emergency basis,” according to the complaint.
“The Executive Order is unlawful, and its commands that federal agencies disregard the law and in many cases their own regulations to fast-track extensive categories of activities,” the coalition alleges. “The invocation of the Nation’s emergency authorities, however, is reserved for actual emergencies — not changes in Presidential policy.”
