An Obama-appointed federal judge in Alaska delivered a major legal victory to President Donald Trump this week, dismissing a lawsuit brought by a coalition of powerful environmental organizations seeking to block Trump's reversal of Joe Biden's sweeping offshore drilling restrictions.

U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason dismissed the complaint on Monday, August 24, after determining that the environmental groups failed to establish a substantial risk of imminent harm.

Gleason was nominated to the federal bench by Barack Obama in 2011.

The case, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, et al. v. Trump, et al., was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska under case number.

The plaintiffs included the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Alaska Wilderness League, Oceana, Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Healthy Gulf, Center for Biological Diversity, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace, and Conservation Law Foundation.

The radical environmental coalition sued President Trump, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick after Trump reversed Biden-era withdrawals of vast sections of the Outer Continental Shelf from possible oil and natural gas leasing.

During his final days in office, Biden attempted to lock away more than 625 million acres of federal waters from future energy production.

The massive withdrawal covered federal waters along the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of America, and portions of Alaska's northern Bering Sea.

President Trump rescinded the withdrawals on his first day back in office, allowing the affected areas to be considered as part of a future offshore oil and gas leasing program.

The environmental groups immediately ran to court, claiming Trump had exceeded his authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and that his action created an imminent threat of environmental damage.

But there was one major problem: There was no imminent drilling activity.

The court found that there were no pending applications for geological or geophysical exploration activities in federal Outer Continental Shelf waters outside the Western and Central Gulf of America.

Judge Gleason concluded that the alleged environmental injuries depended on a chain of future government and industry decisions that had not yet occurred.