A US judge said on Friday she can’t overturn President Barack Obama’s decision to revoke a Chinese company’s purchase of four wind farm projects in the vicinity of a US naval facility’s restricted airspace.
However, US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the Ralls Corporation has a right to a hearing over whether the White House should be forced to explain its decision.
In his September decision, Obama ordered Ralls Corporation, a company owned by Chinese nationals, to divest its interest in the wind farms it purchased earlier this year in the US state of Oregon. The wind farm sites are all in the vicinity of restricted air space near the Naval Weapons Systems Training Facility Boardman. The administration cites unspecified national security risks as the reason for blocking the transaction.
Ralls sued. Its CEO, Wu Jialiang, said in Beijing in October that his company would “never do anything that threatens US national security.”
Jackson said the federal courts don’t have the power to get involved in the president’s decision-making on this issue.
The law “is not the least bit ambiguous about the role of the courts: ‘The actions of the president . . . and the findings of the president . . . shall not be subject to judicial review,”‘ she said.