The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked a federal court to send the federal approval for the New England Wind offshore wind project back to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) for renewed review. The request was filed on 2 December in the US District Court for the District of Columbia in a case brought by the organisation Ack for Whales.
In its motion, the DOJ, acting for the Federal Defendants, says BOEM is now reconsidering its July 2024 decision approving the project’s Construction and Operations Plan (COP). The agency says the earlier approval may not have captured all of the impacts that must be evaluated under subsection 8(p)(4) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and that the administrative record may have understated some of the impacts that were weighed in the decision. BOEM plans to issue a new COP decision after completing this re-evaluation.
The filing links the reassessment to several recent federal actions: a Presidential Memorandum issued in January 2025 directing a review of offshore wind leasing and permitting; the May 2025 withdrawal of the Anderson legal opinion and reinstatement of the Jorjani opinion on OCSLA section 8(p)(4); and a July 2025 order from the Secretary of the Interior instructing the department to reconsider approvals associated with offshore wind projects.
Federal Defendants argue that a voluntary remand would avoid unnecessary litigation over an approval that is already under agency review. The DOJ also asks the court to pause the case while BOEM carries out its reconsideration. According to the motion, Ack for Whales, which filed the lawsuit earlier this year, does not oppose the request, while the project developers intend to oppose it.
The motion notes that construction on New England Wind is neither active nor imminent. The timeline in the COP shows that offshore construction is not scheduled to begin before the second quarter of 2026.
The US government had already signalled earlier this year that it planned to seek a remand and vacatur in relation to the New England Wind approval, and the new filing is described as the formal step to implement that plan for the Avangrid project.
The motion comes shortly after the Trump administration filed, in a separate lawsuit, a request to remand and vacate approvals for the SouthCoast Wind offshore wind project, which the court granted. The new filing in the New England Wind case cites the SouthCoast decision as a relevant precedent.
New England Wind is planned in two phases with a combined capacity of more than 2 GW. BOEM approved the project’s COP in July 2024, following a Record of Decision dated April 2024.
In May 2025, Ack for Whales, together with several organisations opposed to the development, brought suit challenging BOEM’s COP approval and associated authorisations issued under NEPA, the ESA, the MMPA, the NHPA and OCSLA.
According to the new motion, BOEM expects that its renewed analysis may address some or all of the issues raised in the lawsuit and that the new agency action could potentially render the current claims moot once the reconsideration is completed.
