Washington v. Trump

On May 9, 2025, 15 states, led by Washington, filed a lawsuit against President Trump, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), and related federal officials seeking to block use of emergency permitting procedures for energy projects. The plaintiff states asserted that President Trump’s Executive Order 14156, “Declaring a National Energy Emergency,” was unlawful under the common law ultra vires doctrine and that the agency defendants’ efforts to implement the order were arbitrary, capricious, and not in accordance with law. The states alleged that “the circumstances described in the Executive Order do not meet even an expansive definition of the term ‘emergency,’” and that the Executive Order was “internally inconsistent,” claiming insufficient energy supplies while proposing to export those supplies, and excluding solar and wind production—which “are consistently among the cheapest sources of electricity”—from the definition of “energy.” The states also alleged that the Executive Order’s “myopic focus on fossil fuels contradicts our Nation’s goal of promoting reliable, diverse, and affordable energy” and that “[e]xperts agree that extreme weather fueled by climate change—not the underproduction of fossil fuels—poses the most urgent challenge to our Nation’s electric grid.” The states alleged that the defendants’ actions directly harmed the states’ proprietary interests in their natural resources as well as their sovereign interests such as costs associated with “filling the regulatory gap” and quasi-sovereign interests “independent of and behind the titles of its citizens, in all the earth and air within its domain.” The plaintiff states asserted that the President acted ultra vires “by directing agencies to invoke emergency procedures to evade or shorten technical and/or environmental review under circumstances that—as a matter of law—do not qualify as an emergency under applicable statutory and regulatory provisions.” The states further asserted that the Corps and ACHP acted contrary to law and ultra vires by implementing emergency procedures under the Clean Water Act and National Historic Preservation Act and also violated the Administrative Procedure Act.