A district court dismissed a lawsuit brought by individual miners and various mining groups, associations, and businesses challenging an Oregon law that temporarily bans instream motorized mining to protect water quality and fish habitat. The law, with some exceptions, temporarily prohibits instream...

A district court dismissed conservation groups' lawsuit challenging FWS' and DOI's decision to issue permits authorizing two American hunters to import the trophies they garnered in legal hunts of black rhinoceros in Namibia. The groups argued that issuance of the permits violated the APA, ESA, and ...

A Montana court vacated and remanded a water discharge permit that the state's environmental agency issued to a coal mine in southeastern Montana. The agency's decisions are arbitrary and not supported by the law, and when viewed in its totality, the record demonstrates clear errors of judgment with...

A district court held that conservation groups lacked standing to challenge the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to reissue a nationwide permit (NWP 13) authorizing the discharge of dredged and fill material to construct bank stabilization projects. The groups alleged that the Corps reissued...

A district court held on motions for summary judgment that a hazardous waste management company should be held liable under CERCLA for PCE contamination, but that material issues of disputed fact preclude a finding that an employee should be liable as an "operator." The testimony of the company's ex...

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision barring a hunter from using a hovercraft over a stretch of the Nation River that flows through the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, a conservation system unit in Alaska that is managed by NPS. The hunter argued that NPS' ban on hovercraft...

A district court ordered EPA to either promulgate revised emissions standards for the the pulp mill and nutritional yeast manufacturing source categories, or issue a determination that such standards are not required under the CAA. EPA promulgated emissions standards for both of these major source c...

A district court granted an oil company's motion to dismiss claims filed against it for economic losses stemming from the government's moratorium on offshore drilling in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The oil company is a responsible party under OPA, and the plaintiffs—oilfield s...

The Tenth Circuit dismissed an environmental group's citizen suit against an Oklahoma power company for CAA violations at a power plant. The group claimed the company modified a coal-fired boiler without first obtaining an emission-regulating permit as required by the CAA. But because the group file...

The Ninth Circuit held that the public disclosure bar of the False Claims Act did not bar an individual's qui tam lawsuit against his employer under the Act. The employer, an engineering company, entered into a contract with NOAA to design and build a Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS...