The court holds that the Michigan Department of Natural Resources exceeded its authority when it denied a power company's request for a Clean Water Act (CWA) §401 water quality certificate because the company failed to conduct a fish entrainment and mortality study. The court first holds that the a...

The Ninth Circuit held that portions of Idaho’s Agricultural Security Act violate the First Amendment. The law, enacted after a secretly-filmed expose of operations at an Idaho dairy farm went live on the internet, broadly criminalizes making misrepresentations to access an agricultural production...

A district court held that USDA Wildlife Services did not violate NEPA with its lethal wolf management policy in Idaho. In 2011, the gray wolf was delisted under the ESA in Idaho; as a result, management of the wolf population was returned to the state. Wildlife Services conducted an EA in 2011 conc...

The Delaware Supreme Court held that an energy company's shareholders cannot proceed with their suit against the company's directors and officers over the costs of addressing a coal ash spill into North Carolina's Dan River. In 2014, a storm water pipe ruptured beneath a coal ash containment pond, r...

A district court ruled that the District of Columbia's flushable wipe law won't take effect as scheduled. The law, which was to take effect January 1, 2018, stated that wipes labeled "flushable" must readily break up and degrade in sewers. A flushable wipes manufacturer sought to enjoin the implemen...

The Montana Supreme Court held that owners of private land within a Superfund site can proceed with a compensation suit against an oil company to restore their properties beyond the remedies approved by EPA for the Superfund site as a whole. An oil company entered into a consent decree with EPA to r...

The Federal Circuit held that the state of California did not infringe on an emissions trading-related patent, allowing the state's greenhouse gas emissions cap-and-trade program to continue. The plaintiff owns a U.S. patent that covers a method and apparatus for using electronic systems to claim an...

The court holds that the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission did not exceed its authority in finding that a violation of an Occupational Safety and Health Administration safety regulation was de minimis and, therefore, not assessing a penalty. The Secretary of Labor argued that after sh...

The First Circuit held that a pesticide company is not liable for cleaning up PCB-laden caulk installed in a Massachusetts middle school in the 1960s. Before August 1970, the pesticide company sold PCB mixtures to formulators of building materials, who then incorporated them into various end product...

The Ninth Circuit rejected challleges to a 2012 DOI decision to withdraw from new uranium mining claims, up to twenty years, over one million acres of land near Grand Canyon National Park. The lands were withdrawn, subject to existing valid claims, with the intent to protect water resources in the G...