When local environmental activists sued to stop progress on Micron’s first semiconductor manufacturing plant, the federal government jumped to the multinational corporation’s defense.
Lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice argued that even if the activists’ concerns were correct — that a key state environmental review was rushed and insufficient — they should be trumped by national security interests and recent Supreme Court case law.
The DOJ did not join the case with Micron but made these arguments in a separate filing.
That filing appears to be part of a nationwide trend as President Donald Trump’s DOJ is attempting to use the language of “national and economic security” to crush environmentally based legal challenges to its preferred projects.
Several environmental law experts told Central Current they could not think of an example of the DOJ using the same national security argument in other state court cases, but that did not mean it had never happened. The DOJ declined to comment.
“I can’t say it has never occurred, but I am not aware of a similar filing and it is certainly highly unusual,” wrote Christophe Courchesne, the director of Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Environmental Law Center, in an email to Central Current. “This is an escalation, even for a DOJ that has been profoundly aggressive against challenging state environmental policies, in other, also bold ways.”
Last January, Neighbors for a Better Micron and Jobs to Move America filed a lawsuit against Micron, Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency, the state Department of Environmental Conservation, and the Clay planning board. The organizations alleged in their complaint that during the, Micron and the governmental organizations had rushed the project’s State Environmental Quality Review Act review, and as a result, neglected to include information about and alternatives for some environmental issues which they might create.
Micron and the governmental organizations disputed that the review was rushed and said they included all relevant information at the time the review was done.
In late July, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson, who has led several interventions into environmental lawsuits, and other lawyers from the DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division filed a statement of interest arguing the lawsuit threatened economic and national security and could provide a “litigation template” for activists across the country to halt other federally-supported semiconductor projects.
When Central Current reached out to the DOJ, the agency declined to comment, but sent links to press releases about two other environmental law cases in Mississippi and Oregon as recommended reading.
“The Department of Justice will not sit idly by while private organizations use environmental laws to undermine our national security,” said Gustafson in one of the press releases.
“Economic security is national security”
The Trump administration has argued in at least four cases that national security interests should exempt large industries from environmental laws and regulations.
These include:
- Two cases challenging climate superfund laws in Vermont and New York
- Rejecting a California injunction on an oil pipeline
- Attempting to dismiss a Mississippi lawsuit that claimed a large artificial intelligence facility had violated Clean Air Act permitting laws
The administration’s arguments in several of those cases follow Trump declaring a national energy emergency and tasking the attorney general with opposing the enforcement of state environmental laws related to energy.
In March 2026, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth exempted the oil industry from following Endangered Species Act protections for gulf animals – all in the name of national security.
“Expanding the meaning of national security to justify anti-regulation policy changes has become not just a trend but a predominant mechanism by which the Trump administration is accomplishing its goals,” said Paul Sindberg, a lawyer for Jobs to Move America.
Over the last decade, the administrations of Trump and President Joe Biden have increasingly fused national and economic security. Trump said in 2017 that economic security is national security.”
After the passing of the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Advisor, said the geographic concentration of semiconductor manufacturing outside of the United States presented a “critical economic risk and a national security vulnerability.”
The Micron case stands out, even among the cases the Trump administration has already argued, because it is being argued in state court.
While the Trump administration has taken New York and Vermont to court over state policies, those cases often played out in federal court, Courchesne said.
“While the federal government has done so in the past in a variety of contexts, invoking a vague talisman of ‘national security’ also is a hallmark of this administration, such as in the offshore wind context, endangered species committee, and ‘energy emergency’ actions,” wrote Courchesne.
The Micron case
The Micron case is focused on New York’s SEQRA review process.
The lawyers for Neighbors argue that the project’s review was artificially rushed, with a public comment period just a few days longer than the minimum required. In their complaint, Neighbors’ lawyers write a draft environmental impact statement failed to include certain required documents, failed to include important details on environmental issues including PFAS and greenhouse gases, failed to adequately explain why alternatives were not feasible and more.
They also argue that the final EIS tried to remedy some of these issues but still felt short.
They ask the court to annul and void both the final EIS for the Micron plant and all downstream permits from that final EIS.
Lawyers for DEC and OCIDA contend that they adequately addressed everything as best they could at the time, that the process was not rushed, and that voiding the permits would be a waste of both time and money.
DOJ lawyers accused the environmental advocates of using SEQRA to halt Micron’s project “under the guise of environmental concern.”
In their statement of interest, the DOJ argued that the Micron project supports national security by enhancing supply chain security, advancing cybersecurity protection and building a more robust domestic semiconductor ecosystem.
Micron-manufactured chips are used in cell phones, weapons systems, cars, computing, and AI, DOJ lawyers wrote.
Micron is the only domestic manufacturer of DRAM chips, and the expansion is not achievable without the plant in Clay, the DOJ argued. It argued that any disruption to the global supply chain could hurt U.S. access to critical technologies. The plant in Clay is necessary to mitigate risks of chips being compromised by adversaries, DOJ lawyers argued.
The DOJ argued the annulment of Micron’s Environmental Impact Statement could halt the Micron project and damage the country’s security.
“Use of largely procedural state environmental law to halt such a project would thwart the will of Congress and signal to funding recipients that even the most consequential federally backed strategic investments face unnecessary litigation risk,” wrote DOJ lawyers.
The Neighbors for a Better Micron lawyers disagree. In a response, they wrote that the petitioners were not asking the court to decide to bar Micron from building its facility, but “only” that it comply with the environmental laws of the state.
“Federal economic and national security interests do not alter the obligations imposed by New York law,” wrote lawyers for Neighbors for a Better Micron, in a response to the federal government.
The New York Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the case in a hearing on Wednesday.
The oral arguments focused largely on the merits of the case set out by the environmental advocates, with the judge questioning both all involved about what more could have been expected in the SEQRA review and whether its lack actually made any difference in the potential impacts on the environment or the public’s or government’s ability to respond to them.
But the judge did briefly mention the DOJ’s national security argument.
“I agree in a sense that you have to make sure everything is environmentally sound, but how am I, sitting here in Albany, New York, as a trial judge, going to weigh what’s in our national security when I have the government of the United States telling me what is?” asked Judge Thomas Marcelle.
Harmonizing state and federal law
A 2025 U.S. Supreme Court decision about a proposed railroad in Utah provides the blueprint for another of the DOJ’s arguments.
The DOJ argued that the United States has a substantial interest in “harmonizing” SEQRA with its federal counterpart, the National Environmental Policy Act.
Both SEQRA and NEPA mandate environmental review but have no requirement of particular action based on that review. They are “best understood as flipsides of the same coin,” said the DOJ.
The Neighbors lawyers said that framing “demonstrates the Federal Government’s contempt for New York law and independence.”
They wrote that New York environmental protections were “deliberately” adopted and designed to be more stringent than federal law “precisely because federal law provides a less protective standard.”
In the Utah case, the NEPA review was thousands of pages but ultimately did not address the potential environmental impacts of increased oil drilling and refining that might be made possible by that new railroad.
In a unanimous decision, the court decided that the environmental impacts of oil fell outside the jurisdiction of the NEPA review. The majority opinion, signed by five conservative judges, argued that judicial deference to the agencies which had prepared the NEPA review should be the default in deciding what was and was not needed in the NEPA review.
The majority opinion also argued that a “course correction” on NEPA was needed. They said it had “transformed from a modest procedural requirement into a blunt and haphazard tool employed by project opponents (who may not always be entirely motivated by concern for the environment) to try to stop or at least slow down new infrastructure and construction projects.”
The DOJ quoted this in their statement of interest in the Micron case. They argued that New York state courts should apply the same standard of judicial deference, “thereby ensuring continued harmony between judicial review of SEQRA and its federal statutory counterpart.”
As the Micron case awaits the judge’s final decision, local activists from Neighbors for a Better Micron argue that the federal government will not have to deal with the ultimate environmental and economic impacts of the project.
“When the federal government steps in to override local concerns or tell our communities what they should accept, it ignores the voices of the people who are directly affected. Decisions about our neighborhoods should be driven by the people who live here, not by political agendas in Washington,” said Liz Tallman, a local activist, in a statement to Central Current.
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