On February 2, 2011, federal district court judge Martin Feldman cited the Department of Interior for contempt for violating a court-ordered injunction. Here are the highlights of the Order (bear with me because it is a little long):
"The facts of this case are well-known. As Deepwater Horizon's April 20, 2010 explosion gave way to a massive oil spill, the President of the United States formed a bipartisan commission—the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling—and tasked it with investigating the facts and circumstances concerning the cause of the blowout. The President also ordered the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a thorough review of the Deepwater Horizon blowout and to report, within thirty days, "what, if any, additional precautions and technologies should be required to improve the safety of oil and gas exploration and production operations on the outer continental shelf." The results of this review were published on May 28, 2010 in an Executive Summary and Safety Report, and offered the appearance that it had been peer reviewed by a panel of scientists—a claim which was publicly repudiated by several of them. Invoking this study, the Secretary of the Interior ordered a moratorium on all drilling at depths greater than 500 feet in the Gulf of Mexico. The plaintiffs in this case soon challenged the lawfulness of the moratorium. On June 22, 2010, this Court granted the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction and ordered the Administration not to enforce the moratorium:
[Defendants] are hereby immediately prohibited
from enforcing the Moratorium, entitled
‘Suspension of Outer Continental Shelf (OCS)
Drilling of New Deepwater Wells,' dated May
28, 2010, and NTL No. 2010-N04 seeking
implementation of the Moratorium, as applied
to all drilling on the OCS in water at depths
greater than 500 feet.
In that Order, this Court found that the plaintiffs had established a likelihood of successfully showing that the Secretary's decision to issue a six-month blanket moratorium against all companies involved in deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was arbitrary and capricious and, therefore, unlawful. The government apparently notified operators that suspension notices issued under the first moratorium no longer had legal effect and ordered BOEMRE1 personnel not to take action to enforce the moratorium. It is undisputed, however, that deepwater drilling activities did not commence after this Court’s Order. Instead, over the next two weeks, the Secretary of Interior repeatedly affirmed his intention and resolve to impose a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The government appealed the Court’s injunction Order, and sought a stay of the preliminary injunction pending appeal. On July 8, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected a stay, over one dissent. Four days later, on July 12, 2010, the Interior Secretary issued a twenty-two page decision memorandum rescinding the first blanket moratorium and directing BOEMRE to withdraw the suspension letters issued under it; but the Secretary also ordered the agency to issue new blanket suspensions based on a second moratorium. The second moratorium disabled precisely the same rigs and deepwater drilling rigs and activities in the Gulf of Mexico as did the first one (although it superficially, rather than continue the 500-foot depth standard, purported to restrain all rigs that use subsea blowout preventers or surface blowout preventers on a floating facility); the second
moratorium was to apply also through November 30, 2010, the same expiration date that the first moratorium anticipated. The government defended the new moratorium's justness, explaining that though similar (identical) in effect to the first, it addressed the technical concerns highlighted in the Court’s first Order.
The second moratorium was then lifted on October 12, 2010, the same day the parties were to submit some additional briefing. Still, however, no drilling permits have been issued for activities barred by it as of this date. That was October. In November 2010, it also was exposed that an important White House official had changed the Safety Report before its public release, which created the misleading appearance of scientific peer review."
In short, the Department of Interior decided to tell the court "screw you," we are going to stop the drilling anyway. Fortunately, Judge Feldman wasn't going to let the Administration get away with this.
The plaintiffs also stress that the government did not simply reimpose a blanket moratorium; rather, each step the government took following the
Court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance: the government failed to seek a remand; it continually reaffirmed its intention and resolve to restore the moratorium; it even notified operators that though a preliminary injunction had issued, they could quickly expect a new moratorium. Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the reimposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this Court with clear and convincing evidence of the government’s contempt of this Court’s preliminary injunction Order. To the extent the plaintiffs’ motion asserts civil contempt based on the government’s determined disregard of this Court’s Order of preliminary injunction, it is GRANTED."
Apparently, the Obama Administration is willing to not only disregard and circumvent Congress (i.e. FCC Internet regulation and EPA carbon emission standards), but, now, they act in open defiance of the judiciary.
Hornbeck's general counsel commented that “What is striking about today’s ruling is that it holds the government, acting through its highest levels, in contempt of a federal court order.” The only downside: the government has to reimburse Hornbeck for its attorney's fees and litigation costs - using our tax dollars.
My question, though, is after 24/7 media coverage of the BP oil spill this summer, why isn't there a single peep about this ruling and the Administration's intentional manipulation of a court-filed document in an attempt to get what it could not achieve by playing by the rules?
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