Sierra Club v. National Marine Fisheries Service

Sierra Club and three other environmental organizations filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the District of Maryland challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS’s) issuance of a new “Biological Opinion on the Federally Regulated Oil and Gas Program Activities in the Gulf of America.” NMFS prepared the biological opinion after the court <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/sierra-club-v-national-marine-fisheries-service/">found</a> in 2024 that a 2020 biological opinion violated the Endangered Species Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. The 2025 biological opinion found that the proposed activities would jeopardize the continued existence of the Rice’s whale but that proposed mitigation measures would prevent jeopardy. The biological opinion also concluded that the proposed activities would not jeopardize the continued existence of other protected species or adversely modify critical habitat. The plaintiffs’ claims included that the biological opinion failed to account for how climate change-related population shifts would interact with effects of the proposed action in the analysis of whether the proposed action would jeopardize protected species or cause adverse modification to critical habitat. The plaintiffs also alleged that NMFS failed to use best available science on the effects of climate change on endangered species and their Gulf habitats. Louisiana, American Petroleum Institute, and Chevron U.S.A. Inc. filed a lawsuit in the Western District of Louisiana challenging the biological opinion. They did not make arguments that were directly climate change-related but asserted that the 2025 biological opinion overestimated impacts of oil and gas program vessels on listed species, imposed a “reasonable and prudent alternative” based on “hypothesized vessel strikes that are not reasonably certain to occur,” used the wrong take standard, and imposed unnecessary “reasonable and prudent measures” to minimize the impacts of incidental take.