A district court granted Texas' motion to preliminarily enjoin the 2015 Clean Water Rule in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The state argued that implementing the rule would require it to spend significant time and taxpayer resources attempting to determine how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wi...

A Pennsylvania court affirmed the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board's civil penalty assessment against a natural gas exploration company for violating the state Clean Streams Law. The company argued there was insufficient evidence to support the board's determination that contaminated water c...

The Ninth Circuit affirmed a summary judgment rejecting a mining association's challenge to an Oregon law that prohibits the use of motorized mining equipment in rivers and streams containing essential salmon habitat. The association argued that the law was field preempted by the federal 1872 Mining...

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of oil and trucking industry groups' challenge to Oregon's Clean Fuels Program, which regulates production and sale of transportation fuels based on greenhouse gas emissions. The groups argued that the program violated the dormant Commerce Clause by facially ...

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...

A California appellate court affirmed a trial court decision concerning application of the state's public trust doctrine to the state's extraction of groundwater in the Scott River watershed. Environmental groups argued that groundwater resources that are interconnected with the surface water flows ...

The Third Circuit denied review of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's decision to grant a CWA §401 certification for a natural gas pipeline project. Environmental groups argued that the department acted arbitrarily and capriciously by issuing a §401 certification that was im...

A Pennsylvania state court granted in part and denied in part an industry trade group's challenge to state rules governing hydraulic fracturing near playgrounds. The group argued that the rules' definitions for "common areas of a school's property" and "playground" were unlawful, unreasonable, and u...

The Ninth Circuit denied an environmental group's petition to review EPA's approval of a Montana SIP revision. The group argued that the approval was arbitrary and capricious because Montana's Department of Environmental Quality interpreted one of the SIP's provisions less stringently than the CAA a...