America's legal system has held, checking the Trump administration's overreach hundreds of times, including rulings that have overturned a wide range of proposed environmental assaults. The stacking of the Supreme Court with conservative justices did not prevent the highest court in the land from rebuffing the baseless accusations of voter fraud in mendacious lawsuits. Dozens of lower court rulings have also denied lawsuits designed to subvert democracy and overturn election results. Trump and his allies are currently 1 for 58 in their efforts to petition the courts to support their coup attempt.
On December 11 the Supreme Court denied Texas' petition to invalidate election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. This effort was supported by 106 congressional Republicans and 18 state attorneys general. However, the justices unanimously rebuffed the legal challenge with all 7 agreeing to deny relief due lack of standing (ie the failure to demonstrate their case). This follows the December 8 Supreme Court ruling that rejected Republicans' bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Without comment the court dismissed the case and refused to call into question the certification process in Pennsylvania.
The courts impartiality is a credit to a legal system that is the last bulwark against a demagogue who sought authoritarian powers. In 2018 after Trump called a judge who ruled against him an "Obama judge," Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement which read: "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them." In 2019 Roberts wrote, "We should celebrate our strong and independent judiciary, a key source of national unity and stability," adding, "we should also remember that justice is not inevitable."
The courts have also ruled against a wide range of environmental insults emanating from the Trump administration. This includes several rulings on fossil fuel projects in recent months. On December 7 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected the Trump administration's approval of the Liberty offshore oil-drilling project in federal Arctic waters. The legal challenge to defend Alaska's coast along the Beaufort Sea was mounted by a coalition of groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Defenders of Wildlife, Greenpeace, and Pacific Environment. In its ruling the court cited climate concerns and the failure to adequately analyze the impact on polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.
The courts have issued a series of legal setbacks to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) which oversees fossil fuel development on public lands. Rather than entertain partisan ambitions, judges have applied the law which clearly states the BLM cannot ignore climate concerns in its bid to open public lands to fossil fuel extraction. In November the BLM's leasing plans where stymied when a federal court judge ruled that the agency failed to disclose the climate impacts related to the leasing of more than 300,000 acres in Wyoming for oil and gas fracking. In a 2019 ruling the same judge ruled that the agency’s initial analysis of drilling was inadequate.
On September 25 a federal judge in Montana ousted BLM Acting Director William Perry Pendley from that post. Like many Trump appointees Pendley is an attorney who has spent much of his career opposing the agency he oversaw.. The lawsuit was filed by Montana Governor Steve Bullock who argued its illegal for Pendley to continue because he had never been confirmed by the Senate.
On June 16, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., settled the decades-long fight to protect the Badger-Two Medicine region near Glacier National Park in Montana which has been stewarded by members of the Blackfeet Nation for more than 10,000 years. The ruling upholds the cancellation of the last remaining federal oil and gas lease in the area.
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