The Ninth Circuit reinstated application of the roadless rule to the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, holding that USDA violated the APA when it exempted the Forest from the rule. When USDA issued the roadless rule in 2001, it refused to exempt the Tongass National Forest from the rule, which bans...

A district court held that DOI has unreasonably delayed agency action in the agency's review of an oil and gas drilling permit on BLM lands in Montana held sacred to Native Americans. Under the APA, agencies must decide issues presented to them within a reasonable time. Here, BLM initially approved ...

A district court denied Alaska's request for a court order directing DOI to review the state's plan for the exploration of oil and gas resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). When Congress enacted the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980, it authorized th...

A district court held that it lacks jurisdiction over Oklahoma's lawsuit against EPA challenging its proposed emission standards for coal-fired power plants. The state argues that the proposed emission standards, if adopted as a final rule, would constitute an ultra vires action in violation of the ...

The D.C. Circuit, on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, invalidated EPA's 2014 emissions budgets under the transport rule, also known as the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, as applied to various states. The CAA's "good neighbor" provision requires upwind states to prevent sources within their borde...

The D.C. Circuit denied petitions challenging an EPA regulation that revised the NESHAP for hexavalent chromium, a carcinogenic compound that gets emitted into the air during the chrome-finishing process. The new rule, issued in 2012, imposes more stringent emissions limitations than its predecessor...

The D.C. Circuit upheld an EPA regulation that requires automobile manufacturers to use "commercially available" fuel when testing the emissions of new vehicles under the CAA. Several producers of E30, a fuel that contains 30% ethanol, argued that a fuel shouldn't have to be commercially available i...

A district court ordered Oklahoma to file a brief by July 16 explaining why the court should have jurisdiction over the state's lawsuit challenging EPA's proposed "Clean Power Plan" to reduce carbon dioxide emissions on a nationwide basis. Numerous states, including Oklahoma, recently filed a case i...

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed and remanded EPA's rule limiting hazardous air pollutant emissions from power plants, holding that the Agency interpreted CAA §112(n)(1)(A) unreasonably when it deemed cost irrelevant to the decision to regulate power plants. CAA §112(n)(1) directs EPA to regulate e...

The Ninth Circuit denied petitions for review challenging EPA's promulgation of 40 C.F.R. §52.245, a regulation that revised the scope of a previous EPA decision, after the Agency determined that it had mistakenly approved certain new source review rules in 2004 as part of California's SIP. EPA iss...