A district court dismissed a challenge to EPA's amendment to the 2015 Effluent Limitations Guidelines Rule, which established new limits and standards for various types of waste streams discharged by steam electric power plants. Environmental groups argued that the amendment violated the ESA and NEP...

A district court ruled unconstitutional two Wyoming statutes that impose criminal and civil penalties for data collection on private land or public land accessed via private land. Environmental groups argued that the statutes violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The court found th...

The U.S. Supreme Court denied the U.S. government's petition for a writ of mandamus in a lawsuit brought by a group of youths challenging the government's failure to act on climate change and asserting the right to a safe climate. The court found that the government's petition was unwarranted becaus...

The court affirms in part and reverses in part the sentence of an individual convicted for filling wetlands in violation of the Clean Water Act. The court first holds that the two-level downward departure granted by the district court was proper. The factors relied on by the district court were adeq...

The court reverses and remands a district court decision that a town had neither forfeited nor abandoned water rights to 280 acre-feet of water from a federal water reclamation project on a Nevada lake. After acquiring surrounding water rights that had been historically used for irrigation, the town...

In an unpublished opinion, the Ninth Circuit vacated a district court's order granting summary judgment to environmental groups challenging DOJ's McKittrick policy.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 ordered EPA to issue a temperature total maximum daily load (TMDL) under the CWA for the Columbia and Snake Rivers, which are native habitat for endangered and threatened salmon and steelhead populations. An environmental group argued that the Agency failed to issue a TMDL for the r...

A district court granted in part environmental groups' request for judicial review of BLM's resource management plan (RMP) for an area in the Colorado River Valley. The groups argued that the agency failed to consider the severity and impacts of greenhouse gas pollution and climate change, methane e...

In a modified opinion that withdraws a prior published opinion, the Ninth Circuit found that an environmental group has standing to challenge a uranium mining company's right to operate on land previously withdrawn from new mining claims. The group argued that the U.S. Forest Service violated the Ge...

The D.C. Circuit denied two petitions to review EPA attainment designations for the 2010 sulfur dioxide NAAQS. An environmental group argued that the Agency should have designated Gallia County, Ohio, as a nonattainment area rather than an unclassifiable area because air quality modeling data submit...