NEW YORK — Six U.S. states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its March decision to pay French energy company TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to cancel offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York and North Carolina. The states allege the agreement violates federal law and undermines clean energy development.
The lawsuit, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, asserts that the deal breaches the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the Judgment Fund Act. The plaintiffs—Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont—joined New York in asking a federal court to nullify the agreement, block the lease cancellations, and prevent administration officials from implementing the deal.
“The Trump administration is once again trying to kill clean energy projects and destroy good-paying jobs for New Yorkers,” said Letitia James. “After repeatedly losing in court, this administration cooked up a sham deal to pay a foreign energy company hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to abandon offshore wind and invest in oil and gas instead,” she said. “We are fighting back to stop this illegal agreement that threatens to erase over a thousand union jobs and cheat millions of New Yorkers out of clean, affordable energy.”
Federal judges had previously struck down President Trump’s executive orders attempting to halt offshore wind development, ruling them unlawful and arbitrary. Following those legal setbacks, the Interior Department adopted a payment strategy to terminate the leases. TotalEnergies agreed to cancel its plans for two offshore wind farms and committed to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. oil and gas projects instead.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended the deal, calling it “another win for President Trump’s commitment to affordable and reliable energy for all Americans.” He described offshore wind as “expensive, unreliable, environmentally disruptive and subsidy-dependent.” Burgum also said TotalEnergies received a refund of its prior investments, which he characterized as an “interest-free loan.”
The New York-area project was expected to generate 3 gigawatts of electricity—enough to power nearly one million homes—and deliver $10 billion in savings to ratepayers, including $500 million for low-income households, according to court filings. The Carolina Long Bay project aimed to produce more than 1 gigawatt, sufficient for about 300,000 homes.