On March 27, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia blocked a Congressionally-ordered oil and gas lease sale in Gulf waters off the coast of Louisiana, finding that Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (“BOEM”) failed to satisfactorily account for how new offshore drilling would impact the highly endangered Rice’s whale, and requiring that BOEM conduct additional environmental reviews before the lease sale proceeds.
Initially filed in 2023 by Healthy Gulf, Bayou City Waterkeeper, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club, Gulf v. Burgum alleged, among other things, that BOEM did not properly evaluate the environmental impacts of Lease Sale 259.
In his ruling, Judge Mehta held that “BOEM acted arbitrarily by failing to address the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS’s) determination that the whale’s habitat range extends into the western and central Gulf.” Although he noted in passing that “Congress ordered that the sale take place no later than March 31, 2023,” he made no attempt to explain why he and the plaintiffs were free to ignore that Congressional mandate.
Rice’s whale, commonly referred to as the Gulf of Mexico whale, until recently was thought to live year-round only in the waters of the eastern Gulf. However, recent studies found that the whale lives in the central and western Gulf, including the deep waters of the DeSoto Canyon, located east of Louisiana’s coast in the northern Gulf. In early 2021, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”) confirmed Rice’s whale’s status as a distinct species, with likely fewer than one hundred (100) individual whales remaining, cementing Rice’s whales as one of the rarest whales in the world.
Scientists and environmental advocates argue that the whale is particularly vulnerable to being hit by ships because of its behavior. Rice’s whales dive to the seafloor to feed on fish during the day, but rest by floating just below the surface of the water when those fish disperse at night.
“It’s sort of suspicious that they used to be distributed all along the shelf break area and now they’re only found in the area where there aren’t oil and gas leases,” said Barbara Taylor, a former NOAA scientist who now works with the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Expanded Rice’s Whale Protection Efforts were initially implemented by BOEM under President Biden in August of 2023 (Notice to Lessees and Operators (NTL) 2023-G01). These protection efforts included 10-knot vessel speed restrictions, limitations on night travel, vessel strike avoidance protocols, multi-year record keeping requirements, and mandatory minimum separation distances from Rice’s whales. However, these protections were rescinded in February 2025 in response to Secretary’s Order 3418, Unleashing American Energy, under the Trump administration.
In August 2024 in a similar suit, the U.S. District Court of Maryland held in Sierra Club v. Nat’l Marine Fisheries Serv. that National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) biological opinion (BiOp) failed to comply with the Endangered Species Act (ESA), including by failing to properly analyze the threat that Gulf oil and gas activity poses to ESA-listed species and by failing to contain reasonable and prudent alternatives that addresses all the stressors from oil and gas activity that threaten the whale’s continued existence. The court vacated the BiOp but stayed vacatur until May 21, 2025, to give NMFS time to prepare a new analysis that cures the deficiencies the court identified.
While Judge Mehta’s ruling did not cancel the current lease sale, the ruling does subject Lease Sale 259 to additional environmental review and applies only to Lease Sale 259.