The court invalidates a 1999 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) order governing the disposal of high-level radioactive waste (HLW) at the Hanford site in Washington, the INEEL facility in Idaho, and the Savannah River site in South Carolina. Part of the order defines a process by which HLW that meets c...

The court upholds the dismissal of a property owner's inverse condemnation action against the state of Rhode Island for acquiring a portion of his property in 1975 by adverse possession. Because the owner failed to seek compensation through the state court, he forfeited his federal claim. Adequate s...

The court affirms a district court decision that New York Air Pollution Mitigation Law §66-k is preempted by the Clean Air Act (CAA) Title IV cap-and-trade system and violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Section 66-k requires the assessment of an air pollution mitigation offs...

The court holds that §21 of Article XVII to the South Dakota Constitution, which prohibits corporations or syndicates from acquiring or obtaining an interest in land used for farming and from otherwise engaging in farming in South Dakota, violates the dormant U.S. Commerce Clause of the U.S. Co...

The court vacates and remands a trial court holding that increased stormwater drainage from the construction of a U.S. Postal Service facility in West Virginia did not constitute a taking of a neighboring mall owner's property. The trial court held that no taking occurred because the owner failed to...

The court largely upholds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) determination that Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) does not apply to recycled materials used to make zinc fertilizers, or to the resulting fertilizers themselves, so long as they meet certain...

The Ninth Circuit holds that a district court erred in holding that residents living across from a county dump lacked standing to bring Clean Air Act (CAA) claims based on ozone degradation against a county health department and in granting the county summary judgment on the residents' Resource Cons...

The D.C. Circuit held that on remand EPA must explain how the risk assessments it used in exempting certain recycled zinc fertilizer products from regulation under RCRA compare with the risk threshold estimates in a private study. Petitioners were limited to challenging EPA's claim that its study an...

A California appellate court upheld the dismissal of a landowner's inverse condemnation claim against California in which it sought to avoid the effect of an irrevocable offer to dedicate land for public use. The dedication was made by a prior owner of the land in 1983 as a condition of a permit to ...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision to find a possible equal protection violation when a state water quality control board's overzealous regulation of a ski resort's water discharges may have been motivated by personal animus, but affirmed the decision on all remaining claims. When the...