The Pipeline and the Presidential Order: Executive Emergency Authority, State Environmental Law, and the Limits of the Defense Production Act

Spring 2026

Emma Miller

Edited by: Alexander Cristofi

On May 19, 2015, a corroded pipeline owned by Plains All American Pipeline ruptured along California's Gaviota Coast, spilling approximately 101,000 gallons of crude oil, an estimated 21,000 of which flowed directly into the Pacific Ocean near Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County[1]. Oil coated beaches along roughly 150 miles of California coastline, killing birds and marine animals and requiring a cleanup costing $100 million[2]. Federal prosecutors charged Plains All American with criminal violations of pipeline safety law, and in 2020, the United States and California entered into a federal consent decree, a binding court-approved settlement[3]. That decree prohibited the pipeline from resuming operations without explicit written approval from California's Office of the State Fire Marshal. For nearly six years, the pipeline sat idle under ExxonMobil's ownership, as the company failed to obtain the state regulatory approvals required to resume operations[4]. In February of 2024, Sable Offshore Corp. completed an $883 million purchase of both from ExxonMobil and assumed full ownership and all obligations under the consent decree[5]. Then, on March 13, 2026, the Trump administration invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA), a Cold War-era statute originally designed to prioritize wartime manufacturing contracts, ordering Sable to immediately restart oil transportation along the Santa Barbara coast[6].

The Department of Energy claimed the order was necessary to address energy scarcity and supply disruption risks caused by California's regulatory policies, which it argued had left the region and U.S. military forces dependent on foreign oil[7]. However, the administration's own legal foundation undermined that claim. The Office of Legal Counsel's memorandum stated that the DPA authorized preemption of state law even in the absence of a national-defense finding, conceding that the emergency justification was essentially incidental[8]. The administration presented no evidence of a supply shortage, and the pipeline's projected output of up to 50,000 barrels per day represents a negligible fraction of domestic production and would have no meaningful effect on global oil prices[9]. Sable restarted the pipeline on March 16, 2026 without obtaining the required State Fire Marshal approval, violating both an active state court injunction and the 2020 consent decree[10]. California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed suit, arguing that the DPA was never designed to nullify state environmental regulation or override federal court judgments, and that the Department of Energy lacked statutory authority to compel private parties to enter contracts with other private parties[11]. On April 17, 2026, Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Donna Geck ruled that Sable was in noncompliance with the preliminary injunction, finding that nothing in the DPA permitted a party to disregard applicable legal requirements simply by virtue of receiving a presidential directive[12]. Following that ruling, the court scheduled a May 22 hearing to address whether Sable should be held in contempt, and Attorney General Bonta filed an additional motion for a preliminary injunction on May 1, 2026, with a hearing set for June 1[13]. The dispute is now pending before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

This case reaches well beyond one pipeline on the California coast. It asks whether the executive branch can wield emergency economic powers as an instrument for overriding state regulatory authority, bypassing environmental review, and rewriting the terms of binding federal court settlements. The Trump administration's Office of Legal Counsel has argued that the DPA's preemptive reach extends to any state law that would prevent compliance with a presidential order. However, this reading gives the executive branch sweeping authority to dismantle state environmental protections wherever it can assert a connection to national defense[14]. This article argues that this reading strains both the statutory text and decades of historical practice, that the attempted consent decree modification conflicts with foundational separation of powers principles, and that the Ninth Circuit should reject the administration's approach before it fundamentally reshapes the balance between federal emergency authority and state regulatory sovereignty.

The conflict poses two questions. First, does the DPA authorize the executive branch to preempt California's pipeline safety laws without demonstrating a genuine national defense need? Second, can an executive order effectively modify the terms of a binding federal consent decree? Both questions carry consequences well beyond this pipeline. If the administration's position prevails, any future administration could use emergency economic powers to displace state environmental authority and dissolve court-approved settlements simply by identifying a plausible national security rationale. The administration's own memorandum, which concedes that preemption is available even without a national defense finding, makes clear that this is not a theoretical concern but the explicit position of the executive branch[15]. Congress enacted the Defense Production Act in 1950 in direct response to the Korean War, designing it to allow the federal government to direct private industry toward wartime production needs[16]. In the seven decades since, its applications have expanded to include natural disasters and energy supply concerns, but every historical use shares a common thread. In each case, the government directed private parties to produce or supply something the country needed, including military equipment during the Korean War, ventilators and personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic, and solar panels and semiconductors during the Biden administration's clean energy push[17]. Courts and Congress have never permitted its use to authorize a private company to bypass state environmental permitting or ignore a federal court order. The administration's invocation of the DPA in this instance is a novel claim with no precedent in the statute's history.

The OLC's memorandum acknowledges that preemption is warranted here even in the absence of a national-defense finding[18]. That concession undermines the entire basis for invoking the DPA. The statute's authority to preempt state law derives from the premise that a genuine national defense need exists. When the OLC acknowledges that preemption is available even without that finding, it severs the legal justification from the statutory power it claims to exercise, leaving the order without a coherent foundation in the DPA's text. Courts applying rational basis review to executive agency action require at minimum a rational connection between the facts and the agency's conclusion[19]. That connection is absent here, as the administration identifies no mechanism by which Sable's output would meaningfully affect national energy supply. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. crude oil production averaged 13.6 million barrels per day in 2025, setting a new annual record[20]. Sable's maximum projected output of 50,000 barrels per day amounts to less than half of one percent of that figure. The gap between the administration's claimed emergency and the actual facts on the ground is the kind of evidentiary failure that courts have consistently treated as fatal to executive agency action under rational basis review[21].

Section 4516 of the DPA addresses this directly, as Congress included an explicit provision stating that designating a material as strategic and critical does not create new authority to control the allocation or pricing of crude oil[22]. The OLC's reading would require a court to ignore that provision entirely, a result no court applying basic principles of statutory construction may reach. Statutory limitations do not disappear simply because the executive branch finds them inconvenient. The federal pipeline safety statute reinforces this conclusion by explicitly preserving state regulatory roles over intrastate pipelines under 49 U.S.C. § 60104[23]. Dwyer notes that courts apply a strong presumption against federal displacement of state law in areas of traditional state police power, and environmental regulation falls squarely within that category[24]. Congress expressed no intent to displace California's pipeline safety authority anywhere in the DPA's text or legislative history. The absence of that intent reflects a deliberate choice to leave environmental and safety regulation in the hands of the states, a choice the administration asks the Ninth Circuit to quietly undo.

The administration's second claim goes further still. By arguing that the DPA order supersedes the 2020 consent decree, the administration asks the court to accept that an executive order can displace a binding federal court judgment. The Supreme Court recognizes that consent decrees carry attributes both of contracts and of judicial decrees, and a federal court entered this decree, the United States signed it as a party, and most importantly, Sable assumed its obligations as a known condition of its 2024 acquisition[25, 26]. It is worth emphasizing that Sable purchased the pipeline knowing the consent decree existed, knowing what it required, and knowing that compliance with state regulatory approval was a precondition to any lawful restart. Allowing Sable and the executive branch to circumvent that precondition through a presidential order would effectively reward a company for acquiring an asset encumbered by a court judgment and then using political leverage to escape it.

The only legitimate mechanism for modifying a consent decree is Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(5), which requires a showing that applying the judgment prospectively is no longer equitable[27]. The Supreme Court held in Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail that this standard demands a significant change in factual circumstances or law, and explicitly rejected the notion that modification is available merely because a party finds continued compliance inconvenient[28]. A change in executive policy does not constitute a changed circumstance under Rufo. The OLC offered no authority establishing that courts may modify consent decrees to accommodate presidential orders, because none exists[29]. As Morley has observed, the value of such agreements depends entirely on their durability across changing administrations[30]. Allowing an executive order to vacate a decree the United States itself entered would render every federal environmental settlement contingent on continued political agreement rather than binding legal obligation. The implications of that precedent extend far beyond Sable's pipeline. Every consent decree negotiated with the federal government, in every environmental case, in every jurisdiction, would become enforceable only as long as the current administration chooses to honor it.

For these reasons, the Ninth Circuit should hold that the DPA does not authorize the executive branch to preempt California's pipeline safety laws or to modify the 2020 federal consent decree through executive order. That holding should rest on three independent grounds. First, the administration failed to demonstrate a genuine national defense need as the DPA's text requires. Additionally, the OLC's preemption theory conflicts with the well-established presumption against displacement of state law in areas of traditional state police power. Finally, the consent decree is a binding federal court judgment that Rule 60(b)(5) governs exclusively, and a change in executive policy does not satisfy its standard. Sable must obtain all state approvals the consent decree demands, including written authorization from California's Office of the State Fire Marshal, before any lawful restart may proceed. The administration may still pursue its energy objectives through lawful means, whether by working with Sable to satisfy existing state regulatory requirements, seeking legislative amendments to the DPA, or challenging PHMSA's jurisdictional classifications through proper administrative channels. Using a wartime contracting statute as a substitute for those processes falls outside the bounds of what the DPA authorizes.

This outcome serves three distinct interests. First, and most immediately, it enforces the legal promise made to the communities harmed by the 2015 Refugio spill. The NOAA Natural Resource Damage Assessment documented that more than 550 birds were killed, more than 230 marine mammals including seals and dolphins were injured or killed, and that the spill impacted 2,200 acres of subtidal fish habitats and 1,500 acres of shoreline habitats.[31] These numbers represent the cost of allowing this pipeline to operate without adequate oversight. After the 2015 spill, inspectors found 164 structural problems in the pipeline itself, underscoring why independent state safety review remains essential before any restart.[32] A second injunction, issued by a separate Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge, bars work deemed coastal development without a permit from the California Coastal Commission, a reflection of the Commission's own finding that Sable engaged in a pattern of unpermitted development for which it imposed a record $18 million fine.[33] Taken together, these requirements are the accumulated legal response to a company that has demonstrated, repeatedly and on this specific infrastructure, that it will not self-regulate. Requiring full state regulatory review before any restart gives California the ability to assess the pipeline's current safety using information that reflects its actual condition, not permits issued in the 1980s when the pipeline was new and its structural vulnerabilities were unknown.

Second, rejecting the OLC's preemption theory preserves the federal-state balance in environmental regulation. As Dwyer has observed, when federal law threatens to override state authority in areas like environmental regulation, courts require Congress to have expressed that intent clearly, and the DPA contains no such expression[34]. A ruling in California's favor confirms that states retain meaningful regulatory authority over energy infrastructure within their borders even when the federal government identifies a national interest in that infrastructure. The alternative, a rule allowing emergency economic statutes to sweep aside state environmental law wherever the executive can articulate a national security rationale, would leave state regulatory authority dependent on federal tolerance rather than constitutional structure. Third, this outcome protects the integrity of consent decrees as instruments of environmental accountability. As Morley has observed, the value of such agreements depends entirely on their durability across changing administrations[35]. If an executive order can vacate a decree the United States itself entered, it signals to every state, community, and environmental group that has ever reached a court-approved agreement with the federal government that the protection it offers lasts only as long as the current administration chooses to honor it. That outcome corrodes the institutional foundation on which all federal environmental settlements rest.

The strongest counterargument is that courts should defer to executive judgment during periods of national security concern. That argument has limits the Supreme Court drew clearly in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, where the Court rejected President Truman's seizure of the nation's steel mills during an active war because Congress had not authorized it[36]. Justice Jackson's concurrence established the enduring principle that when the President acts contrary to the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest point[37]. Congress limited the DPA's reach in its own text, the federal pipeline safety statute preserved state authority, and a federal court entered a judgment the United States agreed to honor. The presence of geopolitical tension does not transform a private pipeline restart into a national defense imperative, and the Ninth Circuit should reaffirm that statutory limitations Congress built into federal emergency powers cannot be erased by executive order.

The Ninth Circuit now faces a question with consequences that extend far beyond one pipeline on the California coast. The administration's use of the Defense Production Act to override state environmental law and vacate a binding federal court judgment represents a novel and sweeping claim of executive authority, one that finds no support in the DPA's text, its legislative history, or the seven decades of practice that preceded this case. A ruling in California's favor would not limit the executive branch's ability to respond to genuine national emergencies. It would simply require that emergency authority rest on the statutory foundation Congress actually provided, be supported by evidence of a real defense need, and stop short of dissolving judicial judgments the United States itself entered. The immediate stakes are concrete. The pending contempt proceedings against Sable including the June 27 state court hearing and the Ninth Circuit's upcoming oral argument on PHMSA's jurisdictional assertion scheduled for July 2026 will collectively test whether federal courts can enforce their own orders against a private company operating under a presidential directive Those proceedings will also signal to future administrations whether consent decrees negotiated with the federal government carry durable legal force or merely reflect the preferences of whoever currently holds executive power. The longer-term stakes are harder to overstate. If courts accept the OLC's position, the DPA becomes available as a general instrument for displacing state regulatory authority in any context the executive branch can connect to national security, a category with no obvious limiting principle. Every state environmental permitting regime, every federally approved remediation agreement, and every court-supervised settlement involving energy infrastructure would become vulnerable to the same logic. Those communities along the Gaviota Coast whose coastline the 2020 consent decree was designed to protect did not secure that decree only to have it rendered meaningless the moment a future administration found the pipeline politically useful. The Ninth Circuit has the opportunity to ensure that it is not.

References

[1] Nat'l Oceanic & Atmospheric Admin., Damage Assessment, Remediation & Restoration Program, Refugio Beach Oil Spill: Draft Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan/Environmental Assessment (Apr. 2020), https://darrp.noaa.gov/oil-spills/refugio-beach-oil-spill.

[2] Pipeline Remains Offline Two Years After Refugio Oil Spill, KCBX Pub. Radio (May 19, 2017), https://www.kcbx.org/environment/2017-05-19/pipeline-remains-offline-two-years-after-refugio-oil-spill.

[3] Notice of Lodging of Proposed Consent Decree Under the Clean Water Act, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, and the Pipeline Safety Laws, 85 Fed. Reg. 15,870 (Mar. 19, 2020).

[4] Press Release, Sable Offshore Corp., Sable Resumes Oil Flow as Ordered by the Federal DPA (Mar. 16, 2026), https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260315669733/en/Sable-Resumes-Oil-Flow-as-Ordered-by-the-Federal-DPA-with-Expected-Gross-Oil-Rate-of-50000-Bblsd-and-Expects-First-Sales-by-April-1-2026; see also John Frittelli, Cong. Rsch. Serv., R44201, DOT's Federal Pipeline Safety Program: Background and Issues for Congress 3 (2025)

[5] Id.

[6] Id.

[7] Id.

[8] Memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Dep't of Justice, to the Secretary of Energy, Preemptive Effect of Defense Production Act Order on State Law (Mar. 3, 2026), https://www.justice.gov/olc/media/1429671/dl?inline=.

[9] Sable Offshore Corp., supra note 4; U.S. Energy Info. Admin., U.S. Crude Oil Production Rose in 2025, Setting New Record (Mar. 2026), https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67404.

[10] Press Release, Rob Bonta, Cal. Att'y Gen., Attorney General Bonta Files Lawsuit Against the Trump Administration to Stop Executive Overreach Purporting to Authorize Illegal Oil Transportation in Sable Pipelines (Mar. 23, 2026), https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-files-lawsuit-against-trump-administration-stop-executive.

[11] Id.

[12] Press Release, Ctr. for Biological Diversity, Judge: Sable in Noncompliance With Preliminary Injunction Blocking Santa Barbara Oil Pipeline Restart (Apr. 17, 2026), https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/judge-sable-in-noncompliance-with-preliminary-injunction-blocking-santa-barbara-oil-pipeline-restart-2026-04-17/.

[13] Giana Magnoli, California Attorney General Files Motion to Halt the Flow of Sable Oil in Santa Barbara County, Santa Barbara Indep. (May 5, 2026), https://www.independent.com/2026/05/05/california-attorney-general-files-motion-to-halt-the-flow-of-sable-oil-in-santa-barbara-county/.

[14] Office of Legal Counsel Memorandum, supra note 8.

[15] Id.

[16] Daniel H. Else, Cong. Rsch. Serv., R43767, The Defense Production Act of 1950: History, Authorities, and Considerations for Congress 1 (2020).

[17] Daniel H. Else, Cong. Rsch. Serv., R43767, The Defense Production Act of 1950: History, Authorities, and Considerations for Congress 3–5 (2020); see also Rice Univ. Baker Inst. for Pub. Policy, The Defense Production Act's Expanding Role in Energy (May 2026), https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/defense-production-acts-expanding-role-energy.

[18] Office of Legal Counsel Memorandum, supra note 8.

[19] David M. Driesen, Judicial Review of Executive Orders' Rationality, 98 B.U. L. Rev. 1013, 1015 (2018).

[20] U.S. Energy Info. Admin., supra note 9.

[21] Driesen, supra note 19, at 1017.

[22] Defense Production Act of 1950 § 4516, 50 U.S.C. § 4516 (2018).

[23] Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2002 § 2, 49 U.S.C. § 60104 (2018); John Frittelli, Cong. Rsch. Serv., R44201, DOT's Federal Pipeline Safety Program: Background and Issues for Congress 3 (2025).

[24] John P. Dwyer, The Role of State Law in an Era of Federal Preemption: Lessons from Environmental Regulation, 60 Law & Contemp. Probs. 203, 205 (1997).

[25] Firefighters v. City of Cleveland, 478 U.S. 501, 519 (1986).

[26] Notice of Lodging of Proposed Consent Decree, supra note 3; Sable Offshore Corp., supra note 4.

[27] Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(5).

[28] Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk Cty. Jail, 502 U.S. 367, 383 (1992).

[29] Office of Legal Counsel Memorandum, supra note 8.

[30] Michael T. Morley, Consent of the Governed or Consent of the Government? The Problems with Consent Decrees in Government-Defendant Cases, 16 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 637, 642 (2014).

[31] Nat'l Oceanic & Atmospheric Admin., supra note 1; see also Nat'l Oceanic & Atmospheric Admin., $22 Million Approved to Restore Habitats, Wildlife and Recreation Impacted by Refugio Beach Oil Spill, Damage Assessment, Remediation & Restoration Program (June 29, 2021), https://darrp.noaa.gov/oil-spills/22-million-approved-restore-habitats-wildlife-and-recreation-impacted-refugio-beach-oil.

[32] Id.

[33] Tony Barboza, Judge Tentatively Blocks Sable Bid to Restart Pipeline, CalMatters (Feb. 27, 2026), https://calmatters.org/environment/2026/02/santa-barbara-sable-pipeline-injunction/.

[34] Dwyer, supra note 24, at 205.

[35] Morley, supra note 30, at 642.

[36] Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 585–86 (1952).

[37] Id. at 637 (Jackson, J., concurring).