On August 29, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (the "Court" or the "Healthy Gulf Court") issued its decision in Healthy Gulf v. U.S. Department of the Interior. This case marked the sixth occasion in which this Court has reviewed a challenge to a five-year leasing schedule adopted under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act ("OCSLA"). On this particular occasion, a coalition of environmental non-profit petitioners, including Healthy Gulf, (collectively referred to as "Environmental Petitioners") asked the Court to remand the 2024–2029 National Outer Continental Shelf ("OCS") Oil and Gas Leasing Program back to the Department of the Interior ("DOI") for further consideration. The American Petroleum Institute ("API") intervened and argued that Environmental Petitioners' claims were not justiciable. Ultimately, the Court held that Environmental Petitioners had associational standing to pursue their claims, but on the merits, there was no basis to disturb the Program at this time. As such, the Court denied Environmental Petitioners' petition for review.
The 2024–2029 OCS Leasing Program
In July 2017, DOI began the process of developing a new OCS leasing program for the Gulf of Mexico ("GOM")—while GOM is now referred to as the Gulf of America, this case summary follows the Court's phrasing and uses GOM, which was the term in use at the time of the challenged action. Six months later, DOI released a draft proposed program and the proposed scope for the programmatic environmental impact statement. In July 2022, DOI released a proposed 2023–2028 leasing program and a draft programmatic environmental impact statement. DOI received nearly three million public comments. After considering the comments, in September 2023, DOI presented the proposed final program to the President and Congress. Thereafter, in December 2023, DOI issued a record of decision that adopted the 2024–2029 National OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program (the "Program").
The Program ultimately scheduled three lease sales in the Western, Central, and a small portion of the Eastern GOM Planning Areas—Sale 262 (slated for 2025), Sale 263 (slated for 2027), and Sale 264 (slated for 2029). After the Program was adopted, Environmental Petitioners brought suit challenging the Program. While the litigation was pending, the President issued several Executive Orders that revoked the orders underlying Environmental Petitioners' environmental justice claims. The Healthy Gulf Court declined to resolve the parties' dispute over the impact of the Executive Orders issued in early 2025, as the Executive Orders postdated both DOI's adoption of the Program and the parties' briefs. Further, the Executive Orders did not alter the Court's resolution of the case under administrative law and the record in effect when DOI adopted the Program.
Environmental Petitioners Had Associational Standing to Challenge the Program
To challenge DOI's adoption of the Program, Environmental Petitioners invoked associational standing on behalf of its members, which is the type of standing that environmental groups typically invoke when challenging OCS leasing. To establish associational standing, petitioners must establish three elements: (1) at least one of their members would have standing to sue in their own right, (2) the interests the members seek to protect are germane to the organization's purpose, and (3) neither the claims asserted nor the relief requested requires the organization's members to participate individually in the lawsuit. Energy industry groups often attack the first element of associational standing. API did so here and argued that Environmental Petitioners did not meet the first element of associational standing because they did not present (1) an individual who has suffered an injury-in-fact that is concrete and particularized, and actual or imminent, (2) an injury that is fairly traceable to the challenged action, and (3) an injury that is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision. The Court disagreed with API and determined that Environmental Petitioners had associational standing.
The Healthy Gulf Court determined that at least one of the individuals who submitted declarations on behalf of Environmental Petitioners, Robert Wiygul, would have standing to sue in his own right. Mr. Wiygul is a founding member of Healthy Gulf, a Gulf Coast resident, and a recreational fisherman who has fished in GOM for decades. In his declaration, Mr. Wiygul attested that he fishes inshore weekly, visits the Mississippi Barrier Islands monthly, and fishes in OCS waters at least annually when conditions permit. Mr. Wiygul's declaration identified specific lease blocks made available under the Program that has harmed or, upon release, will imminently harm his favorite fishing and recreation spots. The Healthy Gulf Court determined that Mr. Wiygul's alleged harms are concrete and particularized opposed to conjectural or hypothetical and, thereby, establish an injury-in-fact. Further, the Court determined that Mr. Wiygul's declaration established a causal connection between the Program's adoption and the harms that threaten his continued use and enjoyment of affected areas that could be redressed by a favorable outcome. Having found that Environmental Petitioners established the first element of associational standing, the Court briefly addressed the second and third elements. It found that Environmental Petitioners satisfied the second element of associational standing: the record confirmed, and API did not contest, that the interests Environmental Petitioners sought to protect via this lawsuit—protecting GOM communities' health and natural resources—align with the Environmental Petitioners' mission. Finally, the Court concluded that Environmental Petitioners met the third requirement of associational standing: participation of Environmental Petitioners individual members is not required.
Once the Court determined that Environmental Petitioners met all three elements of associational standing, the Court then considered Environmental Petitioners' challenges to the Program, which required the Court to review three OCSLA provisions commanding DOI to take certain actions when it prepares an OCS lease program.
Environmental Petitioners' Challenges to the Program Are Premature
Environmental Petitioners argued that (1) the Program did not reflect a holistic assessment of economic, social, and environmental values, as required by 42 U.S.C. § 1344(a)(1); (2) the Program was not based on planning factors tied to the timing and location of oil and gas activity as required by 42 U.S.C. § 1344(a)(2); and (3) when preparing the Program, DOI did not equally balance the benefits of leasing and the environmental and coastal risks of leasing as required by 42 U.S.C. § 1344(a)(3). In particular, Environmental Petitioners took issue with DOI's failure to properly consider the impact the Program would have on the endangered Rice's whale and other uses of the OCS, such as recreational uses, commercial fishing, and aquaculture. The Court addressed each of Environmental Petitioners' concerns in turn.
First, the Court determined that DOI reasonably evaluated how offshore leasing could potentially impact vulnerable communities in accordance with 42 U.S.C. § 1344(a)(1). Environmental Petitioners argued that DOI was required to assess the vulnerability of individual communities in different areas along the Gulf Coast and evaluate how each community would respond to the potential harms of leasing. The Court disagreed. It found that OCSLA does not require DOI to undertake such a granular review during the initial stage of the Program because such a review would be unduly burdensome. It was enough for the Healthy Gulf Court that DOI assessed the potential for harm across the broader GOM Program Area. DOI's Program highlighted potential burdens across the entire GOM Program Area such as land loss, industrial development, rising sea levels, storm intensification, and pollution. Further, the Program acknowledged that vulnerable, lower-income communities located near oil and gas processing facilities may suffer more severe and longer lasting harm due to their limited access to financial and non-financial resources. Moreover, accompanying the Program was an EIS that also acknowledged the disproportionate impact on vulnerable, lower-income communities, recounted the lasting impacts of hurricanes and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the communities located outside Louisiana's levee protection system, and illustrated how protected wetlands have eroded over the past century of increased GOM leasing activity. DOI's focus on the impact the Program will have on the Gulf Coast community at large was sufficient for this initial phase of the Program.
Second, the Court examined Environmental Petitioners' claim that DOI acted arbitrarily in not selecting the endangered Rice's whale as the GOM region's representative marine mammal of conservation importance. In Environmental Petitioners' view, DOI ignored the Rice's whale proposed critical habitat designation and applied a methodology that was inconsistent and at odds with DOI's prior decision to exclude the Rice's whale habitat from offshore wind leasing areas. Given the rarity of the Rice's whale, its restricted range, and its vulnerability, Environmental Petitioners asserted that DOI was required to designate the Rice's whale as the representative marine mammal in the Program's environmental sensitivity analysis. The Court again disagreed with Environmental Petitioners' position. The Court determined that DOI's reason for not selecting the Rice's whale as the GOM's representative marine mammal was sound: the Program's proposed areas for leasing (the Western, Central, and a small portion of the Eastern GOM Planning Areas) do not overlap with the core distribution area of the Rice's whale (Northeastern GOM at depths of 100 to 400 meters). The Court further explained that the sperm whale has served as the conservation-indicator marine mammal of GOM since 2007 because the sperm whale ranges throughout the GOM, undertakes long-distance migrations across various regions of GOM, and dives thousands of meters in search of deepwater squid.
Moreover, the Court approved of the DOI's decision to consider the Rice's whale habitat during the leasing stage of the Program. Because the final designation of the Rice's whale critical habitat was pending during the initial stage of the Program, the DOI committed to revisiting the Rice's whale critical habitat designation status and, if necessary, making adjustments regarding leasing areas during the second stage of the Program—when specific blocks are selected for development. With this in mind, the Court concluded that Environmental Petitioners' claim concerning the Rice's whale is best understood as a claim under the Endangered Species Act, which the DOI is only required to consult when its actions "may affect" a listed species or its critical habitat. Because the Rice's whale critical habitat was pending during the initial stage of Program, the Court determined that Environmental Petitioners' claim regarding the Rice's whale, when considered under the Endangered Species Act, was not ripe for review.
Third, the Court considered Environmental Petitioners' argument that DOI merely identified other present or anticipated uses of the GOM region without evaluating whether the Program may impede them, and therefore, DOI did not achieve the proper balance that 43 U.S.C. § 1344(a)(3) imposes on it when creating the Program. Essentially, Environmental Petitioners argued that in addition to identifying uses of the OCS that oil and gas leasing may interfere with, DOI should have considered ways to mitigate these potential interferences. The Court disagreed and determined that mitigation is not required during the initial stage of the Program. DOI's identification of multiple uses of the OCS (including commercial, recreational, and subsistence fishing; tourism; navigation and marine infrastructure; military operations; renewable energy; non-energy marine minerals; and the increased presence of aquaculture projects in GOM) was enough to satisfy OCSLA. The Healthy Gulf Court reasoned that mitigation presupposes that DOI knows which lease blocks will be offered, the specific location of leases, and any site-specific conflicts; however, DOI does not have that knowledge during the initial stage of the Program. DOI identified potential conflicts with the multiple uses of the OCS and adopted a process for addressing same through targeted leasing and coordination with other agencies during later stages of the Program. The Court determined that this was the stage-appropriate analysis that OCSLA contemplates. Accordingly, the Healthy Gulf Court concluded that DOI complied with 43 U.S.C. § 1344(a)(2). Further, the Court rejected Environmental Petitioners' balancing claim. Environmental Petitioners argued that DOI did not achieve the proper balance as required under 43 U.S.C. § 1344(a)(3) because it failed to (1) quantitatively assign benefits and costs of different demographic groups and (2) fully consider the Rice's whale environmental sensitivity.
As to the first aspect of Environmental Petitioners' balancing claim, the Court determined that DOI identified environmental considerations, acknowledged the limits of monetizing same, and incorporated these considerations qualitatively into the Program's balancing during the initial stage. The Healthy Gulf Court accepted DOI's representation that it could not quantitatively assign benefits and costs of the environmental considerations during the initial stage and its promise to assess distributional impacts at later stages when location-specific information becomes available. As to the second aspect of Environmental Petitioners' balancing claim, the Court determined that DOI satisfied 43 U.S.C. § 1344(a)(2) when it applied a consistent methodology to select the sperm whale over the Rice's whale for the GOM region. The Court's previous determination that DOI's decision to select the sperm whale over the Rice's whale foreclosed Environmental Petitioners' derivative balancing claim. Moreover, the Court explained that section 1344(a)(3) does not require DOI to isolate or separately quantify the cost of losing a single species, such as the Rice's whale, so long as relevant environmental harms are reasonably reflected in the aggregate.
Accordingly, the Court denied the Environmental Petitioners' petition for review.
OBBBA and BOEM's Recently Initiated 11th Program
The Healthy Gulf opinion is particularly relevant in light of both the One Big Beautiful Bill Act ("OBBBA"), which was signed into law on July 4, 2025, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's ("BOEM") recently initiated 11th National OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program. Under the OBBBA, DOI must conduct lease sales in the Gulf of America and in the Alaska Region, specifically in the Cook Inlet Planning Area and the National Petroleum Reserve. In total, the OBBBA calls for at least 40 federal offshore lease sales, requiring at least 30 lease sales for the Gulf of America through 2040, at least six lease sales for the Cook Inlet Planning Area through 2032, and at least four lease sales for the NPR-A.
In response to the OBBBA and in accordance with President Trump's Unleashing American Energy Executive Order, BOEM released its offshore energy leasing schedule on August 19, 2025. The first Gulf of America Lease Sale titled "Big Beautiful Gulf 1" is set for December 10, 2025. BOEM will publish the final notice at least 30 days prior to the sale. The release of a leasing schedule came shortly after BOEM closed the initial stage, request for information and comment, of the 11th National OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program (the "11th Program"). Once finalized, the 11th Program will replace the 2024–2029 Program—the Program that Environmental Petitioners unsuccessfully challenged. Before the 11th Program is finalized, the Secretary of BOEM must (1) publish a draft proposed program, which is subject to a 60-day comment period, (2) publish a proposed program, which is subject to a 90-day comment period, (3) present the proposed final program to the President and Congress, whom have a 60-day review period, and (4) approve the 11th Program and post a decision memo on same.
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