“They’re weighing: Is this the hill we want to die on or are we going to be sacrificing something that could damage our institutional capacity over the long term,” said Hannah Perls, legal fellow at Harvard’s Environmental and Energy Law Program. “The Biden DOJ has to work with what they inherited: regulations, records, and briefs developed under the Trump administration. They have to decide, is it worth it in this moment to do a 180 and make a weaker argument that could lead a federal court to make a decision about not just the Willow project but how much respect agency expertise deserves.”
June 9, 2021