The Tenth Circuit affirmed dismissal of a lawsuit concerning a long-running water dispute between an Indian tribe and a private landowner in Utah. The tribe sued the landowner in tribal court, arguing the landowner had been diverting the tribe's water for years. The tribal court held it had subject ...
The Eleventh Circuit vacated a district court's dismissal of a challenge to a developer's filling of a wetland near its hotel in southeastern Georgia. An individual and environmental groups argued the developer did not comply with the CWA's permitting process because it filled the wetland for the pu...
A district court dismissed as moot a lawsuit seeking to reinstate a permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline to cross the U.S.-Canada border. Twenty-three states challenged the president's authority to revoke the permit, arguing the permitting decision concerned only international and interstate comm...
More than 50 years ago, Franklin Kury drafted and championed an Environmental Rights Amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution. His book, The Constitutional Question to Save the Planet: The Right to a Healthy Environment (ELI Press 2021), expands upon the story of his amendment to demonstrate how its principles can be the basis for addressing climate change in the rest of the world.
The Court of Federal Claims entered judgment for the U.S. government in a takings challenge against FWS for rerouting spring waters that had previously flowed through church property into a restoration channel in an effort to save a native fish species. The church argued the berm FWS installed upstr...
A district court denied a water district's motion to intervene in an ESA lawsuit seeking protections for longfin smelt. The water district argued it had standing to intervene because its alleged injury—a reduction in water allocation—was economic, its injury was traceable to plaintiff's claims s...
The Fifth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part district court rulings in a collection of lawsuits concerning oil companies' decades of drilling activities along the Louisiana coast. Six Louisiana parishes filed suit in state court, arguing the companies violated the Louisiana State and Loca...
A district court denied a pipeline company's motion to dismiss a challenge to President Trump's issuance of a permit for construction of a cross-border segment of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Environmental groups had argued the president's issuance of the permit violated the Property Clause, the Co...
A district court dismissed a lawsuit concerning the city of Chicago’s delay in issuing an operating permit for a recycling facility in the city’s Southeast Side neighborhood. The company argued its constitutional rights were being violated as a result of the city’s delay of the permit review p...
A district court dismissed two Pennsylvania state senators' challenge to the Delaware River Basin Commission's imposition of a moratorium on gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the Delaware Basin. The senators argued, among other things, that the moratorium exceeded the Commission's authority. ...