Former U.S. President Joe Biden exceeded his authority by withdrawing large areas along U.S. coastlines from future offshore oil and gas development, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled on Thursday.
U.S. District Judge James Cain in Lake Charles, Louisiana, sided with Republican states and oil and gas industry groups that sued to block Biden's move to protect all federal waters off the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the northern Bering Sea in Alaska.
Biden, on one of his final days in office, used his authority under the 70-year-old Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to withdraw the areas. Weeks later, President Donald Trumpsigned an executive order repealing that effort.
Cain ruled Biden's withdrawal was illegal because it was intended to be permanent, and said withdrawals by former President Barack Obama were similar.
"To the extent these were indeed supposed to overcome the power of subsequent executives to revoke or modify their withdrawals, they constituted a departure from the executive branch’s longstanding practice and exceed the authority granted under (section 12(a) of OCSLA)."
(Reuters - Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by Chris Reese)