In an unpublished opinion, the Tenth Circuit vacated a district court's order enjoining BLM's Waste Prevention Rule, which restricted the venting and flaring of natural gas wells, pending finalization of a replacement rule that was undergoing public notice and comment. California, New Mexico, and en...

The D.C. Circuit granted hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) manufacturers' petitions to review a 2016 EPA rule that rendered certain HFCs unacceptable for various uses in aerosols, motor vehicle air conditioners, commercial refrigerators, and foams. The court found that it was bound by a previous ruling that s...

A district court dismissed a lawsuit brought by California farming and ranching groups challenging FWS' designation of 1.8 million acres of critical habitat for two endangered yellow-legged frog species and the threatened Yosemite toad. The groups argued that FWS did not evaluate the effects of the ...

A district court granted Washington's and environmental groups' motion for summary judgment in a challenge to the state's decision to deny a coal company a CWA §401 certification for construction of a coal export facility along the Columbia River. A railroad company, which planned to provide rail s...

A district court denied Ohio's and Tennessee's motion to preliminarily enjoin EPA's 2015 Clean Water Rule that clarified the definition of "waters of the United States" under the CWA. The states challenged the validity of the rule, arguing it extended the scope of the CWA beyond the reach of the sta...

A district court granted in part and denied in part an environmental group's motion for summary judgment in a challenge to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration's (PHMSA's) approval of two spill response plans for an oil pipeline that crosses Michigan's Straits of Mackinac. The ...

A district court vacated a provision of President Trump's 2017 Executive Order that reopened Alaska's Beaufort and Chukchi seas and canyon areas in the Atlantic Ocean to oil and gas exploration. Environmental groups argued the president did not have authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands ...

A U.S. jury awarded over $80 million in damages to a California man who claimed that the weedkiller Roundup caused his cancer. The jury found the man proved that Roundup's design was defective, that it lacked sufficient warnings of the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), and that the weedkiller's ma...

A magistrate judge ruled against a timber company's motion for summary judgment in a challenge to President Obama's decision to include lands covered under the Oregon and California Revested Lands Act (O&A Act) in the expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. The company argued that t...

A district court ordered BLM to provide an explanation for how management of timber harvest on certain federal land (O&C land) in western Oregon had changed, if at all, after President Obama designated approximately 16,000 acres of O&C land as part of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. ...