A district court dismissed environmental and animal rights groups' lawsuit against EPA for failing to respond to a 2009 petition for rulemaking that asked the Agency to regulate concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) as a source of air pollution under the CAA. The groups argued EPA violated ...

A district court held that animal rights groups lack standing to challenge FWS' decision to allow the National Primate Research Center to transfer eight of its chimpanzees to a zoo in the United Kingdom. FWS authorized the transfer under ESA §10 on the condition that the Center donate money to an u...

A district court held that environmental groups have standing to sue EPA under the APA and CWA for its failure to disapprove West Virginia's §303(d) list, which lacks TMDLs for waterbodies previously identified as "biologically impaired." The groups' members use some, but not all, impaired waterbod...

The Court of Federal Claims, in a case involving several claims arising out of the alleged federal mismanagement of tribal lands, held that CERCLA does not bar a tribe from seeking natural resource damages even though cleanup efforts at the site are not complete. The government argued CERCLA's bar o...

The Eighth Circuit reversed a lower court decision that livestock farm groups lacked standing to bar EPA from releasing their members' personal information in response to environmental groups' FOIA requests about concentrated animal feeding operations. The farm groups argued that the requested infor...

A district court held that environmental groups may go forward with some, but not all, of their CWA claims against TVA concerning coal ash contamination stemming from a coal-fired power plant near Gallatin, Tennessee. The groups allege that TVA knew that the ash ponds' construction and the area's to...

A district court upheld the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' and FWS' management plan, EIS, and associated permits authorizing the “take,” or killing, of double-crested cormorants in the Columbia River estuary, even though the agencies failed to consider reasonable alternatives other than killing i...

A district court ordered FWS to reconsider its decision not to designate critical habitat for the Canada lynx in Colorado, Idaho, and Montana. When it published the September 2014 final rule designating lynx critical habitat in the United States, FWS erred in excluding the state of Colorado from the...

The Eleventh Circuit upheld the National Park Service's (NPS') wilderness assessment and management plan for the addition of approximately 112,400 acres of land to the Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida, including its decision to allow off-road vehicle (ORV) use on the added land. Environmenta...

The D.C. Circuit granted a refining company's petition challenging FERC's methodology for determining payments to oil companies that use the Trans Alaska Pipeline System to transport oil in a commingled stream. Absent monetary adjustments to compensate for the difference in quality between inputs an...