A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to lift its blockade on new U.S. wind and solar projects.
On Tuesday, Chief U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Boston sided with nine clean energy organizations that sued to stop the federal government’s “arbitrary and capricious” efforts to hinder wind and solar development on public land or wherever federal permits are required — even as fossil fuels and other energy sources carried on as usual.
The judge issued a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocks the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from enforcing five administrative actions pending a final decision on the case. Casper said the clean energy groups are likely to succeed in proving that the administration’s actions violate federal law and would cause irreparable harm if the court did not step in.
The ruling is the latest in a string of legal losses for the Trump administration, which in the past year has tried but failed to halt construction of offshore wind farms, freeze federal funding for electric-vehicle chargers, and cancel millions of dollars in federal grants for clean energy projects based on the states in which award winners were located — efforts that nonetheless have caused massive disruptions.
The roadblocks outlined in Tuesday’s injunction have collectively led to roughly 57 gigawatts of new “wind, solar, hybrid, and offshore wind capacity” being either canceled or “placed at material risk of delay or cancellation beyond 2029,” representing “at least $905 million in sunk investment costs,” according to a study by Charles River Associates referenced in Casper’s ruling.
Of the five agency actions that were struck down, the most sweeping is what the coalition calls Interior’s “senior political review bottleneck,” which included the July 2025 directive requiring Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to review all decisions related to wind and solar projects. That memo listed nearly 70 types of permits and other items that would need Burgum’s personal sign-off, adding cost, time, and significant uncertainty to projects.
For clean energy proponents, the judge’s decision offers important affirmation that the Trump administration’s broad attacks against renewables don’t hold up under scrutiny.