In an unpublished opinion, the Ninth Circuit vacated a district court's order granting summary judgment to environmental groups challenging DOJ's McKittrick policy. The groups argued before the district court that the policy, which directs prosecutors to request jury instructions with a heightened m...

A district court granted environmental groups' request for discovery relevant to the lobster fishing industry's impact on the endangered North Atlantic right whale. The groups argued that NMFS violated its ongoing duty under §7 of the ESA to ensure against jeopardy of endangered right whales and it...

A district court remanded the U.S. Forest Service's decision concerning the management of roads and trails in the Santa Fe National Forest. An environmental group argued that the agency should have considered the effects of forest management on the endangered Jemez Mountains salamander. The magistra...

A district court vacated FWS' decision to delist the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem population of grizzly bears. Environmental groups argued that the agency violated the APA by failing to consider the impact of delisting on other remaining grizzly populations and arbitrarily and capriciously applying...

A district court vacated FWS' designation of land in California as critical habitat for the endangered Riverside fairy shrimp. Property owners argued that the agency improperly designated 56 acres of land as "occupied" habitat even though the shrimp species live only in the adjacent one-acre stock p...

A district court denied Colorado's and Utah's request to vacate FWS' decision to list the Gunnison sage grouse species as threatened under the ESA. The states argued that many of the agency's claimed threats to the species were unsupported by science, and that its determinations were arbitrary and c...

A district court ruled in favor of fishermen's challenge to NMFS regulations regarding offshore aquaculture in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The fishermen argued that the regulations were facially invalid because they fall outside the agency's authority to regulate fisheries under the Magnus...

A district court issued a temporary restraining order on the scheduled opening of grizzly bear hunting in Idaho and Wyoming. A Native American tribe argued that FWS violated the ESA when it removed the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bear from the list of threatened species, and sought to rest...

A district court vacated and set aside FWS' 2015 decision not to list an isolated population of greater sage grouse as threatened under the ESA. The court's ruling follows an order previously issued by that court granting summary judgment when it concluded that the agency's decision was arbitrary an...

The Ninth Circuit reversed in part a district court's summary judgment that upheld FWS' decision not to list the arctic grayling as an endangered or threatened species under the ESA. Environmental groups argued that FWS erred in considering only the current range of the arctic grayling when determin...