Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty dropped a not-unexpected bomb on the Biden administration by siding with Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and his colleagues in 12 other states in a Louisiana-led lawsuit. Doughty issued a permanent injunction against the Biden administration’s moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal lands and water.

It’s fairly clear the Biden moratorium was illegal, something Landry had made a forceful argument about. Doughty agreed.

“I am pleased the Court recognized that the President stepped outside his authority,” said Attorney General Landry who led the multi-state lawsuit. “Biden’s energy policies have crushed American families with higher energy bills for their homes and vehicles.”

Agreeing with Attorney General Landry, Judge Doughty ruled that Biden’s policy violated the Mineral Leasing Act (MLA) and Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA). President Biden’s order, the judge wrote, was “beyond the authority of the President of the United States”: “Even the President cannot make significant changes to the OCSLA and/or the MLA that Congress did not delegate.”

“We will continue to ensure that American energy policy is crafted by the Legislative Branch, not the Judiciary or Executive,” added Attorney General Landry. “We must keep fighting and winning to bring relief to American consumers.”

Mike Moncla, president of the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association, was effervescent over the ruling…

“This ruling is a huge win for domestic energy production in the Gulf of Mexico. The Biden administration, from the day he was sworn in, has declared war on the oil and gas industry.

Prices at the pump have skyrocketed. Our Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been depleted. We’ve slowly become less and less energy independent. Now, we can get back to being the energy powerhouse of the world.

I’m relieved to see that our system of checks and balances saw to it that Biden way overstepped his authority when banning these lease sales.

I’d like to thank Attorney General Jeff Landry for his diligent work in fighting for domestic production in the Gulf of Mexico.”

The problem at this point now becomes the when and how of those lease sales, because when Biden last was beaten on this issue the administration more or less intentionally botched the lease sale such that an Obama-appointed judge in DC invalidated it.

Team Biden doesn’t just take losses. They fight on. They’ll do whatever it takes to stop new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, because they think they’re saving the planet by doing so.

Meanwhile, Russia is making more money than ever selling into an oil shortage which is crippling Europe’s economy, as Tucker Carlson noted on his show last night.

The legal wins are a good thing. They will set precedents for a later time, when America might once again be a nation of laws. But so long as the radicals who run the Biden administration are still in power, it’s going to be very difficult to restart the offshore oil exploration and production industry in the Gulf of Mexico. Landry gets credit for carrying on the fight, but it can’t be won until Biden and his handlers have lost.