Big win in court for the Arctic Refuge: Court rejects AIDEA's claims, upholds Interior’s authority to pause flawed leasing program
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The Porcupine Caribou Herd in water, the plain, the mountains behind.

Big win in court for the Arctic Refuge: Court rejects AIDEA’s claims, upholds Interior’s authority to pause flawed leasing program

07 Aug, 2023
in America's Arctic, Litigation by

The U.S. District Court ruling today dismissed all claims made by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and the State of Alaska in their attempt to force the Interior Department to move forward with an illegal drilling program in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Trustees for Alaska intervened in that lawsuit on behalf of the Gwich’in Steering Committee and allied groups in March 2022 to defend Interior’s suspension of leases and oil and gas activities on lands held sacred by the Gwich’in Peoples of Alaska and Canada. Today’s court ruling granted summary judgement for the Department of the Interior and Trustees for Alaska’s clients.

The Porcupine Caribou Herd in water, the plain, the mountains behind.
The Porcupine Caribou Herd. Photo by Florian Shulz.

“This court decision rejects AIDEA’s careless agenda to drill on sacred lands and allows us to continue defending the Porcupine caribou herd and our traditional way of life from a destructive, disrespectful, needless, and illegal leasing program,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee in its press statement. “We will always protect these sacred lands that connect our people culturally and spiritually. We will always protect the caribou.”

The Interior Department temporarily suspended leases in early 2021 to conduct a new environmental analysis of a deeply flawed leasing program. We went to court over that leasing program in 2020 on behalf of the same set of clients. AIDEA brought its lawsuit in 2021, seeking to undo the pause on activities and temporary suspension of leases. AIDEA is a state of Alaska–owned entity that obtained leases in the Arctic Refuge during the flop lease sale on Jan. 6, 2020.

“The court rightfully rejected AIDEA’s claims and reinforced the Interior Secretary’s and agencies’ discretion to implement the law,” said Brook Brission, senior staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska. “The 2020 leasing program is deeply flawed and a brutally destructive effort to exploit lands sacred to the Gwich’in and vital to the health of the interconnected lands, waters, plants, animals, and people of the Arctic. Today’s decision upholds the actions this administration is taking to correct the problems with the 2020 leasing program and to ensure that the coastal plain is not sacrificed to oil.”

Read Trustees for Alaska’s full press release with client quotes.

Read the court’s decision.

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