The Seventh Circuit held that memos and emails exchanged between two sections of the DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division should not be disclosed as part of a FOIA request in an underlying Superfund case. A company challenging the proposed consent decree and seeking contribution from the U...
A district court held that BLM must disclose the names of companies who have submitted an "expression of interest" (EOI) in obtaining an oil and gas lease on certain public lands in Colorado. The EOI is the first step in the competitive bidding process for federal oil and gas leases. An environmenta...
A California appellate court upheld a county's approval of a sand and gravel mining pit along a riverbed. An environmental group seeking to overturn the approval argued that the environmental impact report (EIR) that formed the basis of the county's decision violated the California Environmental Qua...
A district court dismissed a nonprofit group's lawsuit seeking to halt EPA studies that expose humans to fine particulate matter. The challenged EPA conduct does not constitute final agency action. EPA's alleged failure to comply with an agency rule does not constitute "agency action". And even if i...
The Louisiana Supreme Court held that a school district may seek remediation damages in excess of those required by state law from oil companies who engaged in oil exploration and production operations on school land. The district sought two types of damages: damages required under state law pursuan...
A California court rejected a challenge to the emissions offset component of California's greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade program promulgated by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) under the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Under the program, all offsets must be additional, meaning tha...