A district court denied the Army Corps of Engineers' motion to dismiss an ESA citizen suit alleging the Corps' operation of a dam in California was unlawfully taking protected salmon species. An individual argued the Corps violated the ESA by jeopardizing salmon populations with the dam's flood cont...
The Fifth Circuit reversed summary judgment for NOAA and NMFS in a challenge to the agencies' rule requiring charter boat owners to install NMFS-approved vessel monitoring systems (VMSs) to track the vessels' GPS locations. Charter boat captains argued the rule's tracking requirement exceeded the au...
A district court granted summary judgment for BLM, fishing groups, and a tribe in a challenge to the Oregon Water Resources Department's (OWRD's) order prohibiting the Bureau from releasing water from Upper Klamath Lake. The plaintiffs argued BLM was required to comply with the ESA in operating the ...
A magistrate judge recommended that environmental groups' motion for summary judgment be denied in a challenge to FWS' authorization of oil and gas drilling on the northern coast of Alaska. The groups argued that FWS' five-year incidental take regulation, accompanying biological opinion, and EA unla...
A district court granted in part and denied in part a mining company's motion to dismiss a lawsuit concerning a proposed open-pit copper-nickel mine in northeastern Minnesota. Environmental groups argued FWS and the Army Corps of Engineers violated the ESA by failing to reinitiate consultation in re...
In 2015, the United Nations Member States, including the United States, unanimously approved 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. In a forthcoming book, leading legal scholars examine each of the SDGs and recommend a suite of government, private-sector, and civil society actions to help the United States achieve these goals. This Article is adapted from Chapter 15 of that book, Governing for Sustainability (John C. Dernbach & Scott E. Schang eds., ELI Press, forthcoming 2023).
Many chemicals and hazardous substances are kept in places that can withstand ordinary rain, but not severe storms or floods. If these events occur and the chemicals are released, people and the environment may be endangered. This Article discusses the hazards posed to chemical and waste disposal facilities by extreme weather events that would be worsened as a result of climate change, and how U.S. laws do (or do not) deal with these hazards; and considers how the law would need to change to cope with what would happen to these facilities in a potentially 4°C world.
It is beyond reasonable dispute that climate change is already taking a toll on nations around the world. In supranational legal and economic discussions, it is also well known that many nations that already suffer great injury from rising temperatures are typically not the ones who caused the problem. The culprits, historically, are developed nations.
Young people are leading the fight against climate change in the United States and around the world. Thirty-two percent of Gen Zers—more than any other generation—have taken concrete actions to address climate change in the last year. Local governments and officials can work with young leaders in their communities to advance climate action by providing resources and enacting change through ordinances, policies, programs, and infrastructure development.
A district court denied summary judgment for commercial fishermen and a trade group in a lawsuit concerning NMFS' allocation of red grouper fishing privileges in the Gulf of Mexico among recreational and commercial fishermen. Plaintiffs argued that Amendment 53 to the fishery management plan for ree...