Environmental groups are suing the Trump administration over its decision to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from complying with the Endangered Species Act, a move they say threatens both the coastline region and the law designed to protect threatened plants and animals.
Lawsuits against the God Squad’s decision, formally called the Endangered Species Committee and made up of several cabinet members, have come in rapid succession. Six lawsuits have been filed against the decision so far, with both the Defenders of Wildlife and a coalition led by the National Wildlife Federation and the National Parks Conservation Association suing this week.
The Trump administration’s decision on March 31 marked the first time in decades the panel nicknamed the “God Squad”—stemming from its ability to decide if a development is worth the potential cost of an endangered species—has met. It followed a request from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that potential litigation in the Gulf of Mexico against oil and gas drilling presented a “national security threat.”
Endangered species litigation in the Gulf, he wrote, “creates uncertainty and instability that is beginning to chill oil and gas development” in the region and could have “disastrous consequences for our national security” while the country wages war with Iran.
U.S. oil production was already at a record high before the committee acted.
“The brazen action taken by the God Squad to exempt federally authorized oil and gas activities in the Gulf from the Endangered Species Act is as unprecedented as it is illegal,” said Andrew Bowman, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, in a statement. “We are in this fight not only to protect the threatened and endangered species now placed in grave peril, but also to protect the Endangered Species Act itself, which was enacted to conserve our shared American heritage – a heritage this administration seems hellbent on destroying.”
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the God Squad “has full authority to grant exemptions” under the Endangered Species Act, and called the decision necessary “so that America’s energy streams would not be disrupted or held hostage.”
Dave Owen, a law professor who studies the Endangered Species Act, said the God Squad exemption under the law is rarely invoked because it is often not needed for developments to move forward, including in the Gulf, where oil and gas drilling has been prevalent for the entirety of the law’s more than 50-year timespan.
“We have an administration that wants to be seen creating exemptions from environmental laws or limiting them,” said Owen, who is at University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. “It wants to be provocative, and so this is a chance to grab headlines for something that could be done, you know, the same result could be produced through conventional Endangered Species Act compliance processes, but I don’t think that would be visible enough for this administration’s tastes.”
Under section 7(j) of the law, the committee has the power to issue an exemption when the secretary of defense cites a national security risk. That’s what the administration has argued to justify the decision, Owen said, but the exemption was issued under section 7(h), which entails a longer, public process that was not followed in this case.
That could create legal vulnerabilities in the administration’s decision, he said, not to mention if its national security argument is found to be arbitrary and capricious, given that the administration has argued there is an energy emergency while simultaneously canceling solar and wind projects.
Thursday, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) held a press conference with Earthjustice and local Gulf community and environmental groups to oppose deepwater drilling in the region.
During the press conference, Mississippi Gulf Coast resident Katherine Egland recalled seeing the environmental damage caused in 2010 when the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe became the largest marine oil spill in U.S. history, dumping more than 210 million gallons of oil into the ocean. Eleven workers died.
“Gulf residents are already the most disproportionately climate-vulnerable region in our nation,” said Egland, a member of the NAACP’s board of directors. “Despite our disproportionate climate vulnerabilities, we continue to be deemed expendable and sacrificed for environmentally harmful projects. We should not be ignored and neglected.”
The spill also killed scores of wildlife, including 20 percent of the Rice’s whale population.
Just 51 of that whale species remain, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issuing a biological opinion 10 months ago that found that collisions with oil industry boats in the Gulf of Mexico could jeopardize the continued survival of the endangered species.
“Nobody takes seriously the idea that our national defense depends on killing a few Rice’s whales in the Gulf,” Owen said.
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Wyatt Myskow
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Wyatt Myskow covers drought, biodiversity and the renewable energy transition throughout the Western U.S. Based in Phoenix, he previously reported for The Arizona Republic and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Wyatt has lived in the Southwest since birth and graduated from Arizona State University with his bachelor’s degree in journalism.
