A federal appeals court on Tuesday issued a surprising rebuke to U.S. President Barack Obama and said he deprived a small Chinese-owned firm of its constitutional protections when he squashed its bid to build wind farms close to a U.S. naval training site.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed a lower court ruling and ordered that the firm, Ralls, be provided the evidence on which Obama had rejected the bid.
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Obama had issued an order in 2012 instructing Ralls to sell off its four planned wind farms due to national security risks, the first time since 1990 that a U.S. president has formally blocked a business transaction or required a sale on such grounds.
—By Reuters