Supreme Court Won’t Hear Challenge to Wind Energy Project off Massachusetts Coast

The plaintiffs argued that a federal appeals court failed to follow a 2024 landmark precedent regarding federal agencies’ authority.

The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington on April 3, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The Supreme Court decided on May 5 not to hear a challenge to the federal government’s approval of a major offshore wind project off the Massachusetts coast.

The court’s decision came without comment in an unsigned order in Seafreeze Shoreside Inc. v. Department of the Interior. No justices dissented. The lead petitioner, Seafreeze Shoreside, is a seafood processing company.

The project, known as Vineyard Wind 1, is located 15 miles off the coast of Nantucket Island.

According to the developer, Vineyard Wind LLC, the project consists of 62 wind turbines spaced a nautical mile apart, and is expected to generate 806 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power more than 400,000 homes.

In July 2024 a blade installed on one of the wind turbines in the project failed, releasing debris into the local environment. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement suspended power production and the installation of further blades during the cleanup and investigation. On Jan. 17, 2025, the bureau lifted the suspension order.

​​The Supreme Court rejected a separate petition challenging Vineyard Wind 1 on Jan. 13. The court did not explain its ruling in Nantucket Residents Against Turbines v. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

The case goes back to 2021, when the Biden administration approved dozens of wind energy generation projects on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) off the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts “in a rush to replace fossil fuels as this nation’s primary source of electricity,” according to the petition filed by Seafreeze and other parties challenging the project’s approval.

The shelf refers to all submerged land and seabed that belongs to the United States and is outside the jurisdiction or authority of individual U.S. states.

The departments of the Interior, Commerce, and Defense jointly issued the environmental impact statement required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which led to approval of Vineyard Wind 1. This was “the first of many such large-scale, industrial offshore wind energy projects slated for the OCS,” the petition said.

The petitioners challenged the project, saying it was not allowed under the NEPA and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA).

“The record showed the project would result in momentous adverse impacts on marine navigation, public safety, the environment, and national security,” the petition said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit declined to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that allowed the project to move forward.

The petitioners, who are represented by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, said in the petition that this decision conflicts with the Supreme Court’s landmark 2024 ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which found that courts must “exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.”

The First Circuit did not follow established precedents and “impermissibly deferred” to the federal government’s interpretations of the NEPA and OCSLA, which created a conflict between its ruling and previous Supreme Court decisions, the petition said.

The circuit court has “unlawfully sanctioned the federal government’s approval of the first of many such planned, enormous wind energy projects scheduled to industrialize the pristine waters of America’s outer Continental Shelf … a decision that has grave adverse consequences for marine safety, the environment, and national security,” the petition said.

On April 9, Solicitor General D. John Sauer declined on behalf of the federal government to respond to the petition.

Seafreeze attorney Robert Henneke told The Epoch Times after the Supreme Court’s new decision that he was “disappointed for my clients for the lasting harm to their community and their economy caused by the Vineyard Wind project.”

However, Henneke, who is also executive director and general counsel at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said he was “hopeful too, that the Trump administration will take the necessary regulatory steps to require that these [wind turbines] be deconstructed and removed.” He added that the first Trump administration had rejected the Vineyard Wind 1 project.

Electricity-generating wind turbines are “bad for the environment” and are not “successful in generating electricity,” the attorney said.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the Supreme Court’s denial of the petition, Matthew Nies, a department spokesman, told The Epoch Times.