The Daily Fuckup

The Fifth Circuit on July 7 denied review in a challenge to the Maritime Administration’s March 2025 license issuance to Delfin LNG, ruling that three environmental groups did not show Article III standing. Because the petitioners failed at the threshold, the panel did not reach the merits of their environmental or administrative-law claims. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/court-agrees-justice-department-environmental-groups-lack-standing-challenge-deepwater-port?utm_source=openai))

The dispute has moved through several rounds of federal review. MARAD first authorized the deepwater port in 2017. In 2024, the Biden administration said more environmental review was needed and declined to issue a license. Then, in January 2025, President Trump’s Unleashing American Energy executive order directed MARAD to reconsider whether additional environmental review was necessary and then to issue the license. MARAD licensed the project in March 2025, and that is the action the petitioners took to the Fifth Circuit. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/court-agrees-justice-department-environmental-groups-lack-standing-challenge-deepwater-port?utm_source=openai))

The court’s ruling keeps the license in place against this challenge for now, but it is not a merits ruling on whether the project’s approvals were lawful. It is a jurisdictional decision: the judges said these petitioners had not tied any injury to the project closely enough to get past Article III. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/court-agrees-justice-department-environmental-groups-lack-standing-challenge-deepwater-port?utm_source=openai))

For Delfin LNG, the decision removes one immediate appellate fight. For opponents, the bigger arguments over environmental review and federal authorization remain unresolved in this case. The Justice Department said the ruling turned on the lack of a traceable injury, and that the court therefore never reached the underlying claims. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/court-agrees-justice-department-environmental-groups-lack-standing-challenge-deepwater-port?utm_source=openai))