A district court held that William Perry Pendley was unlawfully serving as the acting director of BLM. The governor of Montana and the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation argued that Pendley was unlawfully serving as the acting director in violation of the Appointments Clause, t...

The Tenth Circuit upheld a lower court ruling ordering mining and finance companies to comply with EPA's requests for information related to cleanup of a contaminated site in Utah. The companies argued that EPA exceeded its authority under CERCLA when it issued the information requests, the requests...

The Third Circuit held that a PRP's settlement with New Jersey resolving its state-law liability in connection with contamination at a municipal landfill did not protect the party from lawsuits seeking contribution toward expenditures made by EPA on the same site. The district court had concluded th...

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 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...

A district court permanently enjoined a California Proposition 65 warning requirement on the weedkiller glyphosate. Agribusiness groups argued the law, which requires warning labels for products containing chemicals known to California to cause cancer, as applied to glyphosate compelled speech under...

The Federal Circuit reversed a Court of Federal Claims ruling that the U.S. government was liable for flooding private properties when it raised the water level of a lake in Mississippi to prevent a nearby levee from breaching. Landowners argued that raising the water level of the lake, which subseq...

A district court ruled unconstitutional provisions of a North Carolina statute that restricted undercover investigations of facilities and farms where animal testing or processing takes place. Nonprofit groups argued that provisions of the statute violated the First Amendment because they failed the...

The Third Circuit affirmed a district court ruling that the U.S. government was not liable to a coatings company for cleanup costs at a chromite ore processing plant with which it was involved during World War I and World War II. The district court concluded the government was not subject to operato...

The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in part and vacated in part the Montana high court's ruling in a lawsuit concerning cleanup actions across a 300-square-mile Superfund site in Butte. Landowners whose properties are located within the site brought trespass, nuisance, and strict liability claims under ...