California’s legal challenge to the Trump administration’s restart of Sable Offshore Corp.’s pipeline opens a new front in a battle over whether federal agencies can override traditional state powers under broad executive order directives.
The case over the Las Flores pipeline in Santa Barbara, Calif., sets up a potential administrative law dispute that’s taking shape after the US Supreme Court’s 2024 Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision, which gutted judicial deference to federal agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous laws. But perhaps more important is the question of whether a federal agency can rely on a broad presidential emergency declaration to upend …