States are suing to block Trump’s wind ban. NJ’s AG explains why.

New Jersey’s Attorney General Matthew Platkin joined 17 other attorneys general on Monday in challenging the Trump administration over its ​“unlawful” attempt to freeze the development of wind energy.

In an exclusive interview with Canary Media, Platkin said the motivation for challenging the anti-wind directive ​“is not a policy question” but rather is about recent actions taken by the administration that he sees as being carried out ​“unconstitutionally.”

Tensions have been high between many of the states that are all in on wind energy and President Donald Trump since his first day in office, when he pressed pause on new wind development with an executive order. The order halted the approval of leases, permits, and loans for wind energy, pending a federal review. The move dealt a particularly strong blow to the country’s still-emerging offshore wind efforts — and to Northeastern states like New Jersey that have based decarbonization goals and grid planning around the construction of offshore wind farms.

At the time of Trump’s executive order, the nine commercial-scale offshore wind projects that already had federal permits in hand appeared safe from the pause. But Trump’s anti-wind directive has since been cited in federal actions to derail two of those fully permitted projects, including New Jersey’s only fully permitted project.

In March, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency clawed back a clean-air permit from New Jersey’s Atlantic Shores wind farm, using the January executive order as its main justification. A month later, the Interior Department cited Trump’s directive in a stop-work order issued to New York’s Empire Wind 1, a massive 810-megawatt project that had just started at-sea construction.

The attorneys general are asking a federal court in Massachusetts to declare the president’s directive illegal, in part because the administration provided no ​“reasoned explanation” for halting all wind development indefinitely. They also allege that the order violates rules around the federal permitting process. Wind-generated electricity powers more than 10% of the nation’s grid, per the filing, which also points out that states have already invested billions of dollars in the wind industry and argues that attacks on the sector threaten their efforts to secure reliable, affordable energy.

Joining New Jersey in the filing are Democrat-led states Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington. The District of Columbia also joined. 

Barbara Kates-Garnick, a professor of the practice at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said the coalition’s coastal states could be influential in the outcome of the lawsuit. Massachusetts and New Jersey, she noted, are small states without much pipeline infrastructure to rely on to expand energy sources like fossil gas. Nor do they have much land to build utility-scale solar. But they have significant offshore wind resources — and they’ve already spent years investing in and planning to develop those assets.

“It’s these states that really have [legal] standing in this. … So that’s really important,” said Kates-Garnick, a former Massachusetts public utility commissioner. 

This lawsuit is the state of New Jersey’s strongest rebuke yet against the U.S. government’s obstruction of its ability to follow its own clean energy laws and goals.

In 2022, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy set a goal of 11 gigawatts of offshore wind generation by 2040. Three offshore projects in various states of preconstruction development — Atlantic Shores, Invenergy Wind, and Attentive Energy — already have approvals to sell electricity to New Jersey’s grid, though only Atlantic Shores has completed the federal permitting process. The lawsuit spelled out the ​“significant economic benefits” offshore wind is expected to bring to the Garden State. One study cited found that every dollar spent building an offshore wind project is estimated to generate $1.83 for New Jersey’s economy.

Platkin spoke with Canary Media Monday about how the lawsuit came to be and the rationale behind it. 

This discussion has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Canary Media: What is the origin story for this multistate lawsuit? 

Matthew Platkin: We started as a group of attorneys general well over a year ago, early in 2024, preparing based on what was in Project 2025 and what the president said on the campaign trail. We took it seriously, and we wanted to be prepared in the event that he won and what he might do. Wind was one of the issues.

He’s now illegally trying to shut down the wind industry at a time when the president is saying we want to increase domestic energy production. And we’re trying to ensure that we can address climate change. Also, we’re dealing with rising costs. It just makes no sense — on top of it being illegal.

The Trump administration’s EPA recently remanded a federal permit from a New Jersey wind farm while citing the executive order. Was that a turning moment for you? 

We’re looking at everything they are doing. Based on the number of lawsuits that our office has successfully filed, they’re violating the law at a very unprecedented pace. And they’re harming people here. So when it comes to wind, it’s not a policy question in my job. It’s a question of whether the law is being violated. And one of the things that they’ve done with this wind order, and as you heard in other instances as well, is yanking permits unlawfully, both unconstitutionally and in violation of statute.

It was notable to me that, in the EPA’s permit remand decision, a presidential directive was the leading argument. That doesn’t happen often, right? 

This administration seems to think that executive orders carry the force of law outside of some underlying legal authority. For example, an executive order can implement a statute or a constitutional authority. It cannot create new powers. But they seem to be confused about that, given the number of times they’ve tried to rely on executive orders to do unlawful things.

When the federal government issued Empire Wind a stop-work order, was that a tipping point for this group of attorneys general? 

It’s hard for me to say what the tipping point is for all of us. I think certainly the executive order was a major point. For us to have a basis for challenging, you have to have standing. We try to bring a suit when they are ready to be brought, when they are ripe for challenge.

What is important for the public to know, when it comes to this lawsuit, about why it was brought by New Jersey specifically? 

This is a time when we’re dealing with rising costs, when everyone agrees we should be increasing domestic energy production. To just unlawfully shut down an entire industry, simply because you don’t like it for political purposes or because you want to serve the interests of Big Oil, it just makes no sense. It’s flagrantly illegal, but it also just makes no sense.