Lansing, Michigan – Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has added to an existing lawsuit against a Trump administration executive order that declared a national energy emergency. She says the action is being used to get around long-standing environmental restrictions. The new complaint was filed with a coalition of states and includes the U.S. Department of the Interior as a new defendant.
The case is about an executive order that President Donald Trump signed on January 20, 2025, the first day he was back in office. It used the National Emergencies Act to proclaim a nationwide energy emergency. State attorneys general say that the declaration was illegal and not based on facts, pointing out that U.S. energy output had already reached record levels and continued to rise.
The updated lawsuit says that the Department of the Interior has used the emergency declaration to speed up licenses for fossil fuel and other energy projects while ignoring legal obligations under a number of federal laws. The National Environmental Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act are some of them. The group says that these shortcuts make it harder to protect natural resources, wildlife, and public input by lowering the criteria for environmental evaluation.
The allegation is based on a lawsuit that was first filed in May and questioned what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation did. Under the executive order, the Corps was directed to identify projects eligible for accelerated permitting under the Clean Water Act and later issued special emergency procedures that bypass standard review processes. The Interior Department and other government agencies took similar emergency steps.
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In the past, these kinds of emergency procedures were only used in real emergencies, like hurricanes or big oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The states say that employing these powers now, when there isn’t an emergency, is an abuse of federal power.
Nessel has also kept fighting orders from the Department of Energy that the J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant in West Olive, Michigan, must stay open. She says that the decision is based on what she calls a made-up energy emergency.
In a statement, Nessel said the administration is using emergency powers to benefit fossil fuel interests while ignoring environmental laws.
“We’ve already seen how the Trump administration has unlawfully forced the J.H. Campbell coal plant right here in Michigan to stay open under the guise of its fake energy emergency,” said Attorney General Nessel.
“Now, the Department of the Interior is bypassing essential environmental regulations simply to pad Big Oil’s profits. My office will continue pushing back against these illegal actions and defending the rule of law.”
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Attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin joined Michigan in filing the amended complaint.