Trump admin sued over decision to shield Gulf oil operations from environmental rules

WASHINGTON - Gulf and environmental groups sued the Trump Administration today over its decision to strip Endangered Species Act protection from imperiled species threatened by oil-and-gas offshore drilling activities in the Gulf of Mexico. The unprecedented blanket-exemption would leave numerous Gulf species and ecosystems unprotected and vulnerable to extinction, including the critically endangered Rice’s whale, sea turtles, fish, rays, corals, and birds.

• Read the complaint: https://earthjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/1_complaint-for-declaratory-and-injunctive-relief-4.2.26.pdf

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invoked a 1978 Endangered Species Act provision that allows an Endangered Species Committee (commonly known as the “Extinction Committee” or “God Squad”) to wipe out protections for imperiled species. Secretary Hegseth directed the small group of President Trump’s appointees to grant the free pass for offshore drillers, citing “national security” reasons even though no oil and gas industry proposals or permits have been denied due to the Endangered Species Act. Offshore drillers even recently told a federal court that current species protections (which still enable imperiled marine life deaths, injury, and harassment) are not disrupting their operations.

The groups — Healthy Gulf, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Friends of the Earth, and Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice — are suing the Trump Administration for abusing the national security exception under the Endangered Species Act, which does not allow the robust review process required under the law to be forfeited or voided.

The groups filed their lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

QUOTES FROM ADVOCACY GROUPS

“The Trump administration is playing god with our most vulnerable wildlife by deciding which endangered species are worth saving and which can be sentenced to extinction to pad oil and gas profits. The Endangered Species Act and the long-needed protections it requires to prevent species’ extinction do not disrupt oil production in the Gulf. We are suing to stop the Trump administration from abusing national security concerns to seek politically motivated exemptions that weaken protections for endangered species nationwide,” said Devorah Ancel, senior attorney with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program.

“In a moment of self-made crisis, the Trump Administration has decided to manipulate the law to entrench offshore oil drilling in the Gulf for decades to come, even if it destabilizes entire ecosystems that communities and businesses depend on,” said Steve Mashuda, Managing Attorney for Earthjustice’s Oceans Program. “This ‘go-ahead’ to offshore drillers to extract oil and gas in extremely sensitive ocean areas while killing whales, turtles, and many other species is unnecessary and shameful. This abuse of the law won’t lower gas prices, and it will only sell out the Gulf to an industry that has left some of the worst environmental scars our country has ever seen. We are asking the court to stop this illegal order.”

“The Extinction Committee’s vote to absolve oil and gas companies from adhering to the Endangered Species Act is an unprecedented act that will have disastrous consequences for the Gulf,” said Martha Collins, Healthy Gulf Executive Director. “Communities want greater protections for Gulf species, and this is a clear attempt by the Trump administration to silence those voices.”

“Using war with Iran as cover, the Trump administration has invoked the rarely-used Endangered Species Committee ‘God Squad’ to wage a new war — on endangered sea turtles and whales in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Todd Steiner, founder of Turtle Island Restoration Network.

“The Trump Administration’s unprecedented use of the God Squad is rife with illegalities,” said Hallie Templeton, Legal Director for Friends of the Earth. “Public participation has been evaded and a baseless national emergency has been declared without evidence of need or urgency. Meanwhile, the critically endangered Rice’s whale – of which only 51 remain on the planet – has been placed in the administration’s crosshairs, all to benefit oil and gas interests. The buck stops here: we are holding the Extinction Committee and involved officials accountable in court and are confident that justice will continue to carry the day.”

BACKGROUND

The Endangered Species Committee has only convened three times since Congress amended the Act in 1978 to allow for exemptions in extreme circumstances where species protection was irreconcilable with a particular project. Only twice has it decided to exempt specific projects from Endangered Species Act protections — and one of those decisions (regarding spotted owls) was subsequently overturned in court.

In every prior case, there has been a singular project up for consideration by the committee, and a single species whose fate was hanging in the balance. Yesterday’s meeting marks the first time the committee has ever considered a request based on “national security” concerns. It is also the first time that an exemption has been granted for an entire industry, for sweeping actions that have the potential to affect at least 20 endangered and threatened species. Rice’s whales, the only whales that live year-round in the Gulf, have already diminished to around 50 individuals and could become the first human-caused extinction of a whale species in recorded history.

The Endangered Species Act has long served as a bulwark against rampant destruction of species habitat, preserving ecosystems that keep marine life alive and that humans rely on for everything from food to economic security to recreation to cultural practices.

President Trump has repeatedly attacked or attempted to circumvent the Endangered Species Act. Just this week, a federal court struck down a series of regulations from the first Trump administration, restoring key values of the bedrock environmental law.