Five Federal Courts, Five Offshore Wind Wins: What the Sunrise Wind Decision Tells Operators About Regulatory Reversals

Five federal judges. Five offshore wind projects. Five preliminary injunctions in three weeks. A clean sweep.

On February 2, Judge Royce Lamberth blocked the Trump administration's attempt to halt Orsted's $7 billion Sunrise Wind project, completing what may be the most lopsided streak of courtroom losses the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has ever absorbed. Every offshore wind project hit with December 22 stop-work orders is now back online.

What makes this remarkable isn't just the outcome. It's the uniformity. Five different judges, appointed by presidents of both parties, each reviewed classified Defense Department reports claiming national security risks. Each one found BOEM's explanation inadequate under the Administrative Procedure Act. Not a single judge bought it.

If you're building or operating infrastructure that touches national defense, radar systems, or critical supply chains, pay attention. This isn't only an offshore wind story. It's a playbook for what happens when an agency reverses course without explaining what changed, and what courts will do when operators can prove they relied on years of prior approvals.

What Happened

The December 22 Stop-Work Orders

On December 22, 2025, BOEM Acting Director Matthew Giacona issued 90-day stop-work orders to all five offshore wind projects under construction off the East Coast. The stated reason: classified Defense Department reports claiming turbines would interfere with military radar systems.

The projects hit:

• Revolution Wind (700 MW, Rhode Island/Connecticut)
• Empire Wind (816 MW, New York)
• Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (2,600 MW, Virginia)
• Vineyard Wind (806 MW, Massachusetts)
• Sunrise Wind (924 MW, New York)

Together, these represent over $25 billion in investment and enough generation capacity to power roughly 3 million homes. And while those numbers are impressive on paper, what actually mattered to the operators was simpler: they were burning between $1 million and $5 million per day while construction sat idle.

BOEM invoked its authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, 43 U.S.C. § 1334, which lets the Interior Secretary suspend lease operations when "threats to national security" exist. But here's the part that raised judicial eyebrows: BOEM refused to share the classified information even with project personnel holding top secret clearances. The agency was essentially saying "trust us, it's dangerous" while denying cleared professionals any chance to propose fixes.

Five Lawsuits, Five Preliminary Injunctions

All five developers sued in federal court between January and early February. All five won preliminary injunctions. The timeline:

• Revolution Wind: January 12 (U.S. District Court, District of Rhode Island)
• Empire Wind: January 15 (U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York)
• Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind: January 16 (U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia)
• Vineyard Wind: January 27 (U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts)
• Sunrise Wind: February 2 (U.S. District Court, District of Columbia)

Judge Lamberth's February 2 decision didn't mince words. After reviewing the classified Defense Department materials in camera (privately, in his chambers), he wrote that "purportedly new classified information does not constitute a sufficient explanation" for halting a project that had spent over a decade in federal review and billions in construction.

The other four judges, using similar reasoning, reached the same conclusion.

What It Means

The Legal Standard That Won Five Times

Every case turned on the same question under 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A) of the Administrative Procedure Act: was the agency's action "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law"?

The Supreme Court's Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Ass'n v. State Farm, 463 U.S. 29 (1983), sets the bar. When an agency reverses its position, it must provide a reasoned explanation and address reliance interests. BOEM couldn't clear that bar in any of the five cases.

Four arguments resonated across all five courts:

Unexplained reversal. Each project had spent years coordinating with the Department of Defense through the Military Aviation and Installation Assurance Siting Clearinghouse process. DoD had formally approved each one with specific mitigation measures baked in. BOEM never explained what changed. The classified reports, even after judges reviewed them, didn't fill the gap.

Failure to address existing mitigation. Developers had already installed radar mitigation technologies based on DoD's own requirements. A February 2024 Department of Energy study validated these approaches. BOEM didn't explain why what was working suddenly wasn't.

Procedural shortcuts. OCSLA requires notice before suspension and an opportunity to correct. BOEM skipped both. It issued stop-work orders without warning and refused to share information that would let developers propose additional mitigation. Courts found this violated OCSLA and basic due process under the Fifth Amendment.

Suspicious timing. Construction had been ongoing for months or years. If radar interference posed an imminent national security threat, why wait until late December? And why target construction rather than operation, when turbines would actually be spinning?

Judge Lamberth captured what all five courts were thinking: "The court is not persuaded that defendants have provided a sufficient explanation for this abrupt change in position."

Classified Information Wasn't a Shield

This is the part that should get your attention if you operate in any sector where agencies invoke national security.

Under the Classified Information Procedures Act, courts can review classified materials in camera to evaluate government claims without public disclosure. All five judges did exactly that. All five found the classified reports unpersuasive.

Judge Lamberth pointed out that the Defense Department reports BOEM cited were completed in November 2025, yet BOEM waited until late December to act. The reports also didn't address why mitigation measures already in place, developed through years of DoD coordination, were suddenly insufficient.

Courts will scrutinize even national security justifications when:

• The agency can't explain what changed since prior approvals
• Years of documented coordination preceded the reversal
• The agency refuses to share information with cleared personnel who could propose fixes
• The timing suggests pretextual use of authority

Worth noting: these are preliminary injunctions, not final decisions on the merits. The government could still prevail after full discovery and briefing. But five consecutive losses at the preliminary stage, with detailed reasoning from judges who actually read the classified materials, strongly suggests the government's case has foundational problems. Winning on the merits from this position would be unusual.

Irreparable Harm: The Argument That Actually Moved Courts

Developers also had to prove irreparable harm to get preliminary relief. Their evidence fell into three categories, and one of them was devastating.

Financial losses. Sunrise Wind was losing $1.25 million daily when Judge Lamberth issued the injunction, with losses climbing to $2.5 million daily in February. Dominion Energy claimed $5 million daily for Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind. Courts found these losses, while quantifiable in theory, couldn't be remedied by damages alone because of the project cancellation risk. Money doesn't fix a dead project.

Specialized equipment with no substitutes. This was the argument that won it. Offshore wind projects depend on cable installation vessels, heavy-lift jack-up barges, and turbine installation ships that exist in limited numbers globally. These vessels book years in advance.

Sunrise Wind faced loss of its cable installation vessel after February 6, with the next availability window not until Q3 2027. An 18-month gap. That would have killed the project. Judge Lamberth wrote: "The loss of specialized vessels and resulting delays amounts to irreparable harm."

Supply chain cascading. Delays ripple across multi-state manufacturing and assembly networks. Empire Wind's turbine components were being manufactured in New York. Revolution Wind had blade production in Rhode Island. The stop-work orders didn't just halt offshore construction; they disrupted onshore supply chains employing thousands.

If you're building infrastructure with specialized contractor dependencies, this framework matters. Document these now, before you need them:

• Daily financial burn rates during any regulatory delay
• Specific equipment or vessel contracts with limited availability windows
• Supply chain dependencies that make delays exponentially costlier than linear time would suggest
• The point at which delays render the entire project economically unviable, not just expensive

Pure monetary damages won't get you emergency relief. Showing the project dies without it will.

Practical Takeaways

If you're operating infrastructure subject to federal permitting, here's what to do this week:

1. Audit your agency coordination trail. Pull together every meeting, approval, mitigation agreement, and clearance you've completed with federal agencies. If you face a regulatory reversal, proving reliance interests is how you win. Build a chronological index now, not after the stop-work order lands.

2. Identify your specialized dependencies. List any equipment, vessels, contractors, or materials with limited availability or long lead times. Quantify the cost of losing access. This becomes your irreparable harm case.

3. Calculate daily costs for regulatory delays. Courts want numbers. Know your daily burn rate during construction, your lost revenue during operational delays, and the point at which the project becomes unviable. Update these quarterly.

4. Build relationships with state energy offices. New York AG Letitia James filed parallel lawsuits supporting the developers. States have independent standing to challenge federal actions threatening their energy infrastructure. Brief your state energy office on major projects early. You want allies who are already informed if something goes sideways.

5. Structure contracts for regulatory uncertainty. Include force majeure provisions covering regulatory suspensions, milestone extension clauses tied to permitting delays, and termination rights if delays exceed defined thresholds. Don't assume permits stay granted once granted.

6. Review political risk insurance coverage. Standard commercial policies won't cover regulatory reversals. Specialty political risk insurance for infrastructure projects increasingly covers permit cancellation and regulatory change. Get quotes before you break ground, not after.

7. Budget for litigation on major projects. All five developers had litigation counsel ready when stop-work orders hit. If you're building infrastructure over $500 million, include APA challenge costs in your project budget.

8. Brief your board on regulatory reversal risk. These cases show that even extensive agency coordination doesn't eliminate reversal risk when administrations change. This isn't a compliance failure. It's a political risk category that requires monitoring and contingency planning. Your board needs to understand the difference.

What We're Watching

These five preliminary victories suggest something important about how courts will treat regulatory reversals going forward, even when agencies invoke national security. Classified information alone isn't enough. Agencies must explain what changed, why prior mitigation is inadequate, and why the reversal is justified.

If you've built compliance programs around years of agency coordination, these cases tell you courts are willing to protect your reliance interests. Document everything, quantify your dependencies, and know your irreparable harm argument before you need it.

The injunctions bought time. Now we'll see whether the administration appeals or pivots. Either way, the framework for challenging abrupt regulatory reversals just got a lot clearer.

This article is a follow-up to our earlier analyses, "Offshore Wind Scores Two Court Victories" and "Offshore Wind Projects Sue the Federal Government." Those articles tracked the legal theories now validated across all five federal courts.