Pennsylvania's highest court largely upheld a temporary injunction enjoining the state environmental agency from enforcing certain regulations governing unconventional oil and gas operations. The court reversed the lower court's issuance of the injunction on just two issues. Contrary to the ruling o...
A district court granted South Carolina's motion to preliminarily enjoin DOE from terminating a mixed-oxide fuel fabrication facility project currently under construction until the case can be decided on its merits. The project is designed to turn weapons-grade plutonium into commercial reactor fuel...
A district court denied motions to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the federal designation of over 1.8 million acres in the Sierra Nevada mountains as critical habitat for three amphibian species. Associations representing California ranchers and farmers who are no longer able to graze livestock on th...
The Second Circuit affirmed a lower court decision that CERCLA preempts state tort law claims brought by residents living near the Onondaga Lake Superfund site. The owner of the site undertook remedial action pursuant to a federal consent decree. The residents argued, on a state tort law theory, tha...
A district court ordered EPA to comply with a FOIA request concerning the EPA Administrator's statement on TV that he did not believe human activity was a primary cause of climate change. Following his remarks, an environmental group filed a FOIA request for EPA records “relied upon by Administrat...
A Federal Claims court held that the Surface Transportation Board (STB) temporarily took landowners' property without just compensation for use as an interim trail under the National Trails System Act. The landowners' predecessors-in-interest sold right-of-way easements to a railroad for operation o...
A district court held that a city council breached a development agreement for a proposed export terminal when it passed an ordinance that banned coal operations at "bulk materials facilities" as well as a resolution that applied the ban to the proposed terminal. The development agreement froze in p...
The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court's grant of summary judgment in favor of a Native American tribe in a lawsuit seeking to enjoin the DOI's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) from taking a parcel of land into trust for the tribe so it could build a casino and hotel complex. Following the BIA's dec...
A district court dismissed an environmental group's lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Congressional Review Act (CRA), under which Congress recently passed a resolution disapproving an FWS rule that prohibited certain hunting and trapping practices on National Wildlife Refuges in Alask...
A district court held that that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) need not disclose information about certain chemical facilities per an environmental group's FOIA request. The group sought information regarding previously high-risk facilities that have reduced their chemical holdings. DHS p...