The Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Forest Service's ban on rock climbing on Cave Rock, a large rock formation on the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe, Nevada. While the formation holds religious and cultural significance to a Native American tribe, the ban had a secular purpose and had no impermissible re...

The Eleventh Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court decision allowing a chicken plant owner's equal protection claims against various state and local officials to go forward. The owner filed a §1983 suit against the officials on the theory that they violated the owner's constitutional righ...

The court upholds the denial of a church's motion for a preliminary restraining order to prevent the relocation of a cemetery in conjunction with plans to renovate Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Eminent domain does not constitute a "land use" regulation subject to the Religious Land Use and...

The Federal Circuit affirmed the lower court’s judgment that no taking occurred on a Pennsylvania family farm where a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency consent decree required appellant-farmer to reestablish wetlands on a portion of the farm. The farm is an integrated whole despite the exis...

A district court dismissed environmental groups' claim that the Department of Homeland Security's waiver of various federal environmental laws with respect to the construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border under the REAL ID Act of 2005 was unconstitutional. The court lacks the power to in...

A district court granted a motion to dismiss Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, and New Jersey Spill Compensation and Control Act claims filed against the state environmental agency and its commissioner in connection ...

The Tenth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of Colorado's Clean Indoor Air Act. The Act bans smoking in indoor areas, but it expressly exempts from this general prohibition "airport smoking concessions" such as airport restaurants and bars. A coalition of tavern and bar owners filed suit challeng...

The Ninth Circuit upheld an injunction enjoining the California Air Resources Board from enforcing state regulations that limit emissions from the auxiliary diesel engines of ocean-going vessels within 24 miles of California's coast. Clean Air Act (CAA) §209(e)(2)(A) requires California to obta...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the dismissal of state takings claims arising out of a state ban on open-pit mining for gold or silver by the cyanide heap leaching process. The plaintiffs, who prior to the ban had acquired leases of Montana state property for the purpose of mining gold, silver, and other t...

The Second Circuit remanded with directions to dismiss claims against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and a former Agency administrator for misleading plaintiffs into believing that the air quality in lower Manhattan in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, was safe enough to permit th...