Trump appointee William Perry Pendley served unlawfully as acting head of the Bureau of Land Management for 424 days, a U.S. district judge ruled in ordering Pendley’s immediate removal from office. Chief District Judge Brian Morris, based in Great Falls, Montana, said he would hear arguments in the near future on which of Pendley’s orders must be vacated, reported Drovers.
Morris might invalidate “a wide range” of decisions by Pendley to open federal land in the West to oil and gas drilling, said the Washington Post. “This puts a question mark over every decision he has made,” said Tracy Stone-Manning, associate vice president for public lands at the National Wildlife Federation. “And that’s the price the administration pays for not going through the normal process of nominating a director and having that approved by the Senate.”
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a candidate for the Senate, filed the lawsuit in July challenging Pendley’s tenure. In his decision, Morris said the Trump administration failed to follow the rules for appointing a temporary director of the agency when it lacked a Senate-approved leader. In May, Pendley signed a succession order to keep him, as deputy director of policy, in charge of the agency if there was no permanent director. President Trump eventually nominated Pendley but withdrew the nomination in mid-August.