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WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Louisiana has blocked the Biden administration’s suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, in the first major legal roadblock for President Biden’s quest to cut fossil fuel pollution and conserve public lands.

Judge Terry A. Doughty of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granted an injunction Tuesday against the administration, pending the outcome of a separate legal challenge led by Jeff Landry, the Republican attorney general of Louisiana.

Mr. Landry and attorneys general from 12 other states, all Republicans, sued to lift a White House executive order issued in January that temporarily halted new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters. Mr. Biden had signed the order during his first week in office, saying he wanted a pause in order to review leasing.

Judge Doughty ruled that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and her agency “are hereby enjoined and restrained from implementing the pause of new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters,” until the states’ legal case against the administration is decided.

He wrote that the pause on new leasing should end nationwide and noted that such sweeping preliminary injunctions against federal actions were exceedingly rare. But he concluded that the 13 states had demonstrated that their economies could be irreparably harmed by the pause on drilling.

The 13 states have argued that the pause was illegal because it was issued without a formal public comment period. Joining Louisiana were Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.

The suspension of the leases has been one of the most high-profile and controversial policy moves by a president who has made climate action central to his agenda.

Progressive activists celebrated the move as a sign that Mr. Biden is serious about shutting down production of fossil fuels, the burning of which is the chief cause of global warming. Republicans and the oil industry have criticized it as illegal and an example of government overreach that could damage the economy and displace thousands of oil and gas workers.

A spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which manages federal oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, said in a statement that the administration was reviewing the ruling and would comply with it.

The spokeswoman, who declined to be quoted by name, said that the Interior Department continued to work on an interim report to Mr. Biden about the state of the federal oil and gas drilling programs, as well as recommendations on the future of the federal role in drilling on public lands.

Ms. Haaland is expected to send those recommendations to Mr. Biden later this summer.

In a statement, Mr. Landry called the injunction “a victory not only for the rule of law, but also for the thousands of workers who produce affordable energy for Americans. We appreciate that federal courts have recognized President Biden is completely outside his authority in his attempt to shut down oil and gas leases on federal lands.”

Congressional Democrats vowed to move forward with efforts to limit oil drilling on public lands.

“We need to update our fossil fuel leasing laws across the board to establish a cleaner, more sustainable standard of use for our public resources, as this committee is already seeking to do,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. “Our economic and environmental future shouldn’t be subject to rulings based on industry-funded science or opportunistic complaints that we didn’t hear until President Biden was sworn into office.”

Ms. Haaland, a former environmental activist, once said that the federal government should ban from public lands all new hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, an environmentally destructive form of oil and gas drilling.

She now heads the agency that oversees the nation’s roughly 500 million acres of public lands, including national parks and current oil and gas drilling.

She has also been charged with overseeing Mr. Biden’s “30 by 30″ initiative, which calls for conserving 30 percent of public lands and waters by 2030.



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