Overview
- Chief Judge Denise J. Casper in Boston issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday that blocks an Interior Department memo requiring secretarial sign-off at nearly every step of wind and solar permitting.
- The ruling also pauses related actions, including new “capacity density” tests that rate energy per acre, an Army Corps directive, a Fish and Wildlife planning-tool ban, and an opinion affecting offshore wind.
- Casper found the developers are likely to win under the Administrative Procedure Act and would face imminent, irreparable harm from a permitting bottleneck if the policies stayed in place.
- The injunction covers only members of the nine plaintiff groups, and agencies can still seek an appeal or slow approvals informally even though they cannot apply the blocked rules to these parties.
- Industry groups say the stalled reviews put tens of gigawatts at risk, and the decision extends recent court setbacks for policies that favor fossil fuels over renewables, even as Interior defends the changes on security grounds.