ELR Citation: 50 ELR 20123
No(s). 18-16105 and 18-16141 (9th Cir. May 26, 2020)

The Ninth Circuit upheld a district court ruling that Oakland, California breached its contract with a company to develop a commercial rail-to-ship terminal on a former U.S. Army base near the San Francisco Bay. The company argued that Oakland breached the contract by barring coal operations at the facility and that the resolution it passed violated the Commerce Clause and was preempted by federal law. The district court found that Oakland lacked the showing needed—that the proposed coal operations would be substantially dangerous to health and safety—to allow it to impose new regulations under the terms of the contract, and thus held that the city breached the contract and declared the resolution invalid. The appeals court determined that it would review the case as a breach-of-contract dispute rather than an administrative law proceeding, and held that the district court did not err in finding that the city's estimates of dust emission from transported coal were unreliable, that the report showing the proposed coal operation would exceed particulate matter standards was flawed, that the city's evidence that any volume of coal emission was harmful did not credibly establish a substantial danger, and that its evidence pertaining to the risk of coal fire was speculative and contradicted by the record. It therefore affirmed, 2-1, the district court's ruling that Oakland breached its contract.