The court holds that a lower court improperly dismissed a laundry detergent manufacturer's claim that an exclusive franchise agreement between a county and a solid waste handler violated the dormant U.S. Commerce Clause. The agreement gave the waste handler the exclusive right to collect and process...
The court grants in part and denies in part a New York municipal village's motion to dismiss property owners' negligence and Fourteenth Amendment due process claims against the village for failure to address an unlicensed solid waste management facility's violations of the municipal zoning code. The...
The court holds that a county in Missouri can regulate the location of solid waste facilities. A development company challenged a county regulation that prohibits the location of a sanitary landfill within one-quarter mile of any occupied dwelling. A trial court denied the company's motion for summa...
The court holds that a municipal regulation prohibiting billboards on rooftops did not effect a taking of an outdoor advertiser's interest in its rooftop signs. The regulation, enacted in 1975, prohibited rooftop billboards after 1987. The advertiser renewed its leases for rooftop billboards with se...
The court upholds a district court dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction of recreational groups' claims that the U.S. Forest Service violated the U.S. Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) when it designated certain areas of the Shawnee National Forest as Research Natur...
In Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC) v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly upheld orders issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pursuant to §§113(a)(5) and 167 of the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act), prohibiting construction of a new power generator unit at a mine in Northwest Alaska.
Editors' Summary: Rather than signaling the death of private property rights, as media and the public initially feared, the Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London ushered in an era of increased state and federal protection for private property. In this Article, Daniel H. Cole examines Kelo's repercussions for urban redevelopment. He begins with a description of the case, and then examines the resulting backlash from the media and public opinion, which decried the decision as unduly expanding eminent domain powers.
Editors' Summary: In this Article, William W. Wade evaluates the conceptual measurement of economic impact within the Penn Central test for income-producing properties recently adjudicated in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The discussion considers measurement of the denominator of the takings fraction related to Penn Central's parcel as a whole and whether it differs between permanent and temporary takings.
In a recent essay, David Coursen asks an important and unexamined question: Are environmental justice policies, which seek to avoid disproportionate environmental burdens on minority and poor communities, on a "collision course" with the Equal Protection Clause? In concluding that a potential collision is more illusory than real, Coursen offers a number of reasons why governmental actions to promote environmental justice have not been challenged in court and, even if they were to be, would not be subjected to strict judicial scrutiny.