The Trump administration’s efforts to bring back oil and gas drilling were denied by a California federal judge this week.

The administration wanted to pause enforcement of a 2022 California law that prohibited drilling in areas near schools, hospitals and homes. But U.S. District Judge Dena Coggins ruled Monday that California’s law was a “reasonable environmental regulation” and that the Trump administration had failed to show likely “irreparable harm” from letting the law stand.

“Californians can breathe easier knowing that the state’s protections against oil and gas drilling are still in place,” said Victoria Bogdan Tejeda, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, in a Tuesday news release. The center was among a coalition of advocacy groups that joined California in opposing the administration’s request. 

At the start of his second term, President Donald Trump vowed to bring back aggressive drilling to the U.S., with disregard for the environmental and human impact. He famously declared “drill, baby, drill” in his 2025 inauguration speech, reviving the idea that the country has a vast fuel supply compared with the rest of the world, and it should be extracted.

Trump’s energy policy led the Bureau of Land Management to sue California earlier this year in an attempt to supersede state regulations on drilling.

The administration argued that federal laws overrode the state’s law, Senate Bill 1137, which created 3,200-foot protection zones that prohibit oil drilling near schools, hospitals and residences, as a way to protect the health and safety of communities neighboring federal lands. An estimated 3 million low-income Californians live within 3,200 feet of active oil wells, and drilling has affected their health. The state also created a mapping tool to identify prohibited sections.

While this is a small win for environmental advocates, the Trump administration has been successful opening up drilling in other parts of California. Just last month, it approved drilling along the Santa Barbara coast using a corroded pipeline that was known to cause a massive oil spill in 2015. Gov. Gavin Newsom called it “desperate, reckless, and illegal.”