A district court denied a motion to enforce its previous order vacating DOI's repeal of the Valuation Rule and reinstating prior regulations governing payment of royalties on oil, gas, and coal extracted pursuant to leases on federal and Indian lands. Conservation groups argued that the Office of Na...

The Ninth Circuit reversed, 2-1, a lower court ruling denying a request to preliminarily enjoin a logging project in the Mendocino National Forest. An environmental group argued the Forest Service improperly determined that the project qualified for a categorical exclusion (CE) for road repair and m...

The Sixth Circuit dismissed as moot a lawsuit seeking to preliminarily enjoin EPA's 2015 Clean Water Rule that clarified the definition of "waters of the United States" under the CWA. Ohio and Tennessee challenged the validity of the rule, arguing it extended the scope of the CWA beyond the reach of...

The Fifth Circuit affirmed, 2-1, a lower court ruling in favor of fishermen's challenge to NMFS regulations regarding offshore aquaculture in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The fishermen argued that the regulations were invalid because they fell outside the agency's authority to regulate fish...

The Fifth Circuit vacated and remanded a lower court decision that imposed penalties against an oil company for alleged CAA permit violations at its industrial complex in Baytown, Texas. Environmental groups filed a CAA citizen suit against the company, alleging violations that occurred thousands of...

The Second Circuit vacated and remanded a lower court ruling in a lawsuit concerning the discharge of thousands of gallons of oil from a submarine cable into Long Island Sound. A state public power utility company sought to recover costs for containing and remediating the discharge pursuant to the O...

The D.C. Circuit stayed a lower court ruling that ordered the Dakota Access Pipeline to be shut down and emptied of oil within 30 days. As to the pipeline company's motion to stay the order vacating the Army Corps of Engineers' issuance of an easement under the Mineral Leasing Act, however, it found...

The D.C. Circuit upheld EPA's 2018 decision to add a wheel-covering facility in Mississippi to the NPL. The company that assumed environmental liabilities for the facility argued that EPA improperly applied the hazard ranking system regulations to the site by failing to account for the company's mit...

A district court denied summary judgment for New York in a challenge to EPA's designation of the eastern Long Island Sound as an open-water dredge disposal site. New York argued EPA's determination that a new site was needed to service the eastern Sound was arbitrary and capricious, that the Agency ...

A district court denied the U.S. government summary judgment in a lawsuit concerning California's cap-and-trade agreement with Quebec. The government argued the agreement was conflict preempted by the foreign affairs doctrine because it created an obstacle to the effectuation of the Global Climate P...