“Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears” is a blog series documenting the harmful impact of President Trump’s judges on Americans began to ’ rights and liberties. It includes judges nominated in both his first and second terms.
Judge Ryan Nelson, who was nominated by Donald Trump to the Ninth Circuit court of appeals, wrote a 2-1 decision joined by Trump judge Danielle Forrest that mostly rejected an environmental challenge to the nation’s largest oil drilling project on public lands on Alaska’s North Slope in the Arctic. Judge Gabriel Sanchez, who was nominated by President Biden, dissented in the June 2025 ruling in Center for Biological Diversity v US Bureau of Land Management (BLM)>
What happened in this case?
In 2023, after earlier disapproval in a district court ruling, BLM under the Biden Administration approved the Willow Project, which is the largest oil drilling project in the US. The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and other environmental groups challenged the project as violating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other environmental standards. This included concerns about significant release of greenhouse gas emissions that risk causing serious ice melting and other environmental harm.
This time, a district court granted summary judgment to BLM and dismissed the claims against it. The environmental groups took their challenge to the Ninth Circuit.
How did Trump judges Nelson and Forrest on the Ninth Circuit rule and why is the result harmful?
Trump judge Nelson wrote a 2-1 decision, joined by Trump judge Forrest, which dismissed the CBD challenge and largely affirmed the approval of the Willow Project. Nelson did find that BLM had committed a “procedural” violation of NEPA because it failed to fully explain why its analysis complied with the statute and therefore remanded the case to the agency for a better explanation, but did not vacate the agency order approving the project, which was already underway.
Judge Sanchez dissented. He explained that the agency’s errors were much more “fundamental” than the majority claimed. In particular, he wrote, the agency had improperly decided to exclude from its review any alternatives that “did not ‘fully develop’ the Willow Project’s oil and gas fields,” even if they provided more “robust” environmental and other protections to Alaska’s North Slope. BLM simply failed to “provide any reasoned explanation,” he went on, for its decision to require that any alternative considered would fully develop the oil and gas fields.
An attorney for Trustees for Alaska was highly critical of the ruling, commenting that as a result, the BLM would not “minimize the harm from this project on the Arctic’s people, animals, habitat, and the planet in a real way.” The decision sets a precedent that may also be harmful in other cases concerning NEPA, particularly in the Ninth Circuit, which includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. The ruling also illustrates the importance of our federal courts to health, welfare and justice and the significance of having fair-minded judges on the federal bench.