"[N]early one-third of the Gulf of Mexico has been closed to commercial and recreational fishing." --U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman (June 22, 2010)

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon well operated by BP exploded, killing 11 and injuring many more workers, as it began spewing "endless gushes of crude oil" into the Gulf of Mexico 50 miles south of the Louisiana coastline at a depth of 5, feet. Besides these immediate "senseless" worker deaths and injuries, "horrible losses" were sustained by the families and loved ones of the dead and injured crew, the broken pipe on the floor of the sea gushed crude for nearly three months afterwards, and the oil muck "spread across thousands of square miles and persists in damaging sensitive coastlines, wildlife, and the intertwined local economies."

In response to these "all-too-familiar tragic facts," on May 28, 2010, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) Secretary Ken Salazar imposed a six-month moratorium on Gulf deepwater drilling. Oil drilling services companies (Hornbeck) operating in the Gulf promptly filed suit, seeking a preliminary injunction forbidding the moratorium from taking effect. On June 22, 2010, the federal district court granted plaintiffs' motion. Shortly afterwards, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refused to reinstate the moratorium. On July 12, 2010, Secretary Salazar issued a new moratorium. The government then moved, on mootness grounds, in the district court to dismiss plaintiffs' suit based on the first moratorium and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to vacate the district court's preliminary injunction. On September 1, 2010, the district court ruled that plaintiffs' case challenging the Secretary's first moratorium was not moot. On September 29, 2010, the Fifth Circuit ruled that the government's appeal of the preliminary injunction was moot because the injunction was legally dead, and this expedited chain of swiftly moving events was still in process.