AUSTIN – TheTexas Public Policy Foundation is expressing disappointment over the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to deny review of a case asserting fishermen would be significantly harmed by the Biden Administration’s approval of a massive offshore wind project.
The case, Seafreeze Shoreside v. Dep’t of Interior, was brought by a coalition of fishermen that sued to cease the development of the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project in New England.
TPPF filed the case on behalf of the fishermen back in December 2021. Three years later, the First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a ruling granting the defendants in the case summary judgment.
The Supreme Court’s decision not to review leaves the First Circuit’s opinion in place.
“Of course, it’s not the result we wanted,” said TPPF Senior Attorney Ted Hadzi-Antich. “But we will continue to pursue our goal of shutting down the Vineyard Wind project by filing an administrative petition with the secretary of the interior, seeking reevaluation of the legal and factual missteps of the Biden Administration in approving a project that is so harmful to safety, the environment, and national defense.”
TPFF asserts that though the alliance of fishermen’s organizations was unsuccessful, the case exposed the Biden Administration’s destructive climate agenda that left unchecked would have built hundreds of thousands of wind turbines off the American coastline, turning public opinion against the project to litter the shoreline with windmills.
Opposition hit a fever pitch when a blade from one of the Vineyard Wind projects collapsed into the sea last year and distributed thousands of pieces of fiberglass across the shore. A year earlier, the tides were turning against offshore wind projects when the federal government opened two massive areas off the Texas coast in the Gulf of America and not a single company bid on the leases, TPFF points out.
“While we are disappointed for our clients, a key piece of the Biden Administration’s radical agenda has taken a significant hit as a result of their courageous stand,” said TPPF Executive Director Robert Henneke. “The only monuments to the Biden Administration will be broken wind turbines off the coast of Nantucket.”
To watch TPPF's mini-documentary on the case, "A Heavy Wind: The Threat to an American Heritage," click here.
TTPF is a non-profit free-market research institute based in Austin that aims to foster human flourishing by protecting and promoting liberty, opportunity, and personal responsibility.
