A district court held that the U.S. Forest Service's travel management plan for the Salmon-Challis National Forest violates NEPA. Environmental groups argued that the travel plan fails to ensure that motor vehicle use is properly sited and managed on the Forest in order to minimize adverse environme...

A district court upheld the FWS' biological opinion and the U.S. Forest Service's EIS and record of decision for the Idaho Roadless Rule. The court therefore denied environmental groups' request to enjoin the rule and replace it with the nationwide roadless rule that was enacted in 2001. The...

The First Circuit, in a case of first impression, vacated a lower court decision that it should abstain from hearing a RCRA citizen suit concerning the cleanup of contamination caused by leaking USTs at a former gasoline filling station in Puerto Rico. The pendency of parallel state administ...

The Ninth Circuit vacated and remanded DOE's energy transmission congestion study and national interest electric transmission (NIET) corridor designations prepared under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct). The EPAct added §216 to the Federal Power Act, requiring DOE to prepare the conges...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision dismissing a Peruvian Achuar indigenous group's lawsuit against an oil company for environmental contamination and the release of hazardous wastes. The complaint alleges that, during its 30 years in the Achuar territories, the oil company kno...

A California appellate court reversed a lower court decision denying a petition challenging the adequacy of a county's environmental analysis of a proposed surface mining operation on a 40-acre site in the foothills of the Southern Sierra Nevada mountain range. The county limited its environ...

A California appellate court reversed a lower court decision ordering a city to set aside its approval of a permit to demolish an historic building and to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) before considering reissuance of the permit. CEQA does not apply to the demol...

A California appellate court affirmed a lower court decision denying a petition challenging a city's approval of a project to build 560 residential units on a 200-acre site long used for agricultural purposes. A citizens group filed a petition, claiming that the environmental impact report (...

A district court held that environmental groups lack standing to challenge three decisions by the BLM and a decision by the Interior Board of Land Appeals concerning 39 federal oil and gas leases in Utah. The groups do not have standing because they have not shown that their members have suf...

A district court dismissed a motion to dismiss environmental groups' citizen suit against five coal companies alleging thousands of violations of the CWA and SMCRA in West Virginia. Because EPA entered into a consent decree with the companies, the defendants argued that the groups' CWA claim...