7 states sue Trump administration for N.Y. wind farm cancellation
June 2 (UPI) -- Seven Democrat-led states sued the President Donald Trump administration Tuesday over a move to block a windfarm off the coast of New York.
In March, the administration made a deal with French energy company TotalEnergies to pay it $928 million to cancel construction of wind farms off the shores of New York and North Carolina. The deal would require the company to invest the same amount in oil, natural gas and liquified natural gas production in the United States.
The lawsuit, filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James, calls the deal illegal. James filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia along with attorneys general of New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont.
The planned wind farm was known as Attentive Energy and would have been 54 miles south of Jones Beach, N.Y. It would have produced enough energy to power more than a million homes.
James said in a press release that the project would have saved New Yorkers $10 billion in energy bills and brought more than 1,700 jobs to the state. She also said it violated at least two federal laws -- the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the Judgment Fund Act.
"This administration cooked up a sham deal to pay a foreign energy company hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to abandon offshore wind and invest in oil and gas instead," James said in a statement. "We are fighting back to stop this illegal agreement that threatens to erase over a thousand union jobs and cheat millions of New Yorkers out of clean, affordable energy."
The states want the court to cancel the deal, stop the lease cancellation and stop Trump from doing more to implement the deal.
President Donald Trump has made it clear that he dislikes wind energy, calling the turbines "ugly," and saying they kill whales and that the noise they make causes cancer.
On Aug. 29, the Department of Transportation announced it was cutting about $679 million in funding to 12 wind farms, calling the projects "wasteful."
Under the deal, TotalEnergies forfeited its lease for the wind farm, and the Department of Justice reimbursed the company the $795 million it had paid for the lease.
TotalEnergies also secured a similar deal to cancel a smaller wind farm called Carolina Long Bay in North Carolina that would have powered 300,000 homes. Tuesday's suit did not challenge that deal.
The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act restricts the Department of the Interior's ability to cancel offshore wind leases. The Judgment Fund Act regulates appropriations that are used to pay court judgments and settlements.
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This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 9:19 AM.