The court upheld the Atomic Safety Licensing Board's dismissal of environmental groups' intervention in early site permit proceedings for new nuclear power facilities in Clinton, Illinois. The groups contended, among other things, that the applicant failed to adequately consider energy efficiency or...
The court held that the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) environmental assessment (EA) for a logging project in Oregon violated the National Environmental Policy Act and that the lower court erred in dismissing the case as moot. Although the harvested trees cannot be restored, harm to old gro...
The court upheld a lower court decision dismissing residents' takings claim against a city for the dewatering of their water wells in the 1990s. Their takings claim based on past violations was barred by the statute of limitations because it was delinquently filed in federal court. Meanwhile, their ...
A district court held that the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) arbitrarily and capriciously denied petitions to list certain genetically engineered varieties of grasses as noxious weeds under the Plant Protection Act. APHIS' insistence that international obligations require that p...
The Seventh Circuit upheld the dismissal of landowners' takings claim against a city for allowing their land to become flooded due to city-owned stormwater detention ponds and a wastewater treatment facility. The flooding transformed their land from farmland to wetlands. The landowners filed an inve...
The Second Circuit upheld the dismissal of rescue, search, and cleanup workers' substantive due process complaint against federal officials for knowingly issuing false statements about air quality safety in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks of the World Trade Center. The wor...
The Federal Claims Court denied the U.S. government's motion to dismiss property owners' takings claims against it in connection with a U.S. Army Corps of Engineer's project along the shore of Lake Michigan. The owners claimed that the Corps' construction and maintenance of jetties from 1950 to 1989...
A district court held that the DOE's March 2003 decision regarding the remediation of Area IV of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley, California, violated NPA. DOE's decision to issue a FONSI rather than prepare an EIS was a clear error of judgment. The remediation is not categorically ...
The D.C. Circuit set aside an FAA letter that changed the runway use procedures at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Petitioners argued that the new procedures will route more jet aircraft onto two previously restricted runways, thereby increasing noise, soot, and exhaust fumes over r...
A district court held that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Fisheries (NOAA-Fisheries) did not violate the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it chose not to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) or environmental assessment for its Hatchery Listing Policy (HLP) fo...