Ken Paxton, Texas Attorney General

 AUSTIN – (News Release) Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joined a multistate amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, urging reversal of a lower court’s decision to vacate the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in U.S. history.   

 The brief argues that the lower court judge erred in shutting down the lease sale and worsening the tremendous damage being done by the Administration’s misguided war on American energy. “America is in the midst of an energy crisis,” the amicus brief reads. “The district court’s vacatur of . . . Lease Sale 257 . . . in the Gulf of Mexico will only exacerbate this crisis and inflict greater costs on the American people.” At the same time the Biden Administration is shutting down new leases, the average cost of gasoline in the country has skyrocketed to $5.00 a gallon. 

 Relatedly, Attorney General Paxton and several other state attorneys general had previously won a nationwide injunction against the Biden Administration’s oil and gas leasing moratorium, a first-day executive order that attempted to halt sales of new oil and gas leases on federal public lands and in offshore waters. President Biden’s efforts to thwart new oil and gas exploration and production—and state-led litigation to stop him—continue to this day. 

 Read the multistate amicus brief here.