Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Department of Transportation

The Fifth Circuit denied a petition for review brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, and Habitat Recovery Project challenging the Maritime Administration’s (MARAD’s) approval of a deepwater port license for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility in the “Gulf of America,” finding that petitioners lacked Article III standing. MARAD, an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation, approved Delfin LNG’s project to build a deepwater port in 2017 following an environmental impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). After Delfin modified the project’s financing, ownership, and design, MARAD in 2024 determined that the original approval no longer supported the modified project and asked Delfin to submit an amended application. Delfin did not do so. In 2025, following a presidential executive order directing MARAD to determine within 30 days whether the modifications presented “seriously different [environmental] consequences,” MARAD concluded the changes reduced the project’s environmental effects and issued the license without further environmental review in March 2025. Petitioners argued that MARAD’s approval violated the Deepwater Port Act, NEPA, and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by forgoing a supplemental environmental review, amended application, and public comment period. The Fifth Circuit, however, ruled that none of the individual members whose statements the petitioners relied on had shown they would suffer a concrete, particularized injury fairly traceable to the licensing decision. These individuals described harms to their fishing, hunting, health, recreation, and research activities, but did not show that those harms were caused by this particular project rather than by industrial activity in the region more broadly. They also failed to show they lived or worked close enough to the project site to be affected by it. Because petitioners failed to establish standing, the court did not reach the merits of their statutory claims and denied the petition for review.

Three organizations filed a petition for review in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration’s issuance of a license for the Delfin LNG LLC deepwater port terminal off the coast of Louisiana. In a press release announcing the lawsuit, the organizations said they were challenging the failure to fully assess the environmental and climate harms of the project, which would be the U.S.’s first offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project.