Re: Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill’s Legal Assault on American Energy Dominance
Attorney General Pam Bondi October 31, 2025 U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001
Subject: Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill’s Legal Assault on American Energy Dominance
Dear Attorney General Bondi:
In a September 24th letter addressed to you, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill requested that the U.S. Department of Justice “dismiss all lawsuits related to insurance coverage under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.” We couldn’t help but notice that her apparent opposition to the political weaponization of litigation against American energy producers — and the threat this trend poses to American energy dominance – is inconsistent with her alignment against Chevron and other American energy producers in Louisiana’s coastal erosion lawsuits. For your awareness, we respectfully submit this letter and the enclosed addendum highlighting these inconsistencies and contradictions. My marked up and edited letter in this addendum is intended to show that Attorney General Murrill’s rationale in calling for the Department of Justice to dismiss these Biden-era lawsuits can easily apply to why the Louisiana coastal erosion lawsuits should also get dismissed.
State Attorney General Murrill wrote that the Biden Department of Justice’s “unsupported and completely novel” reinterpretation of insurance law has imposed prohibitively expensive retroactive penalties on offshore oil producers, thus threatening President Trump’s energy dominance agenda as laid out in the Unleashing American Energy Executive Order. Yet, in Louisiana’s coastal erosion lawsuits, Attorney General Murrill’s own office has advanced a theory that similarly undermines settled law and destabilizes the very industry she purports to defend. By reinterpreting the State and Local Coastal Resources Management Act of 1978 (SLCRMA) to reach activities that were lawfully commenced before 1980 and expressly exempted from permitting requirements, the Louisiana Attorney General has embraced a form of retroactive state overreach that mirrors the regulatory excesses she criticizes at the federal level.
As shown in the attached markup, the coastal erosion lawsuits threaten to do precisely what President Trump’s energy executive orders were designed to prevent:
- They retroactively penalize federally authorized energy development, contradicting the clear federal intent of the Unleashing American Energy and Protecting American Energy from State Overreach Orders.
- They create legal and financial uncertainty that chills investment, restricts insurance availability, and deters continued offshore operations — risks that parallel those caused by the Biden DOJ’s reinterpretation of OPA 90.
- And they undermine the Administration’s broader mandate under the Declaring a National Energy Emergency Executive Order, which recognizes that state and local interference in energy production constitutes a direct threat to America’s energy independence and national security.
In short, the same logic Attorney General Murrill invokes to condemn the Biden DOJ’s actions under OPA 90 applies with greater force to her own litigation posture against energy producers working in Louisiana. We appreciate the Department of Justice’s recognition, as expressed in its September 11th amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, that these coastal lawsuits represent unconstitutional state interference with federally directed and federally authorized energy development — exactly the type of “state overreach” President Trump’s orders instruct DOJ to confront and neutralize.
We appreciate your leadership and the Department’s continued efforts to ensure that America’s energy producers are not subjected to politically motivated or legally unsound litigation at odds with President Trump’s energy dominance agenda.
Respectfully,
George Landrith President and CEO Frontiers of Freedom Institute
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Addendum:
