Los Angeles, City of v. Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District
A district court dismissed a city's lawsuit against California state and local air districts challenging fees it must pay to mitigate wind-blown dust from a dry lake bed that exceed state and federal air standards. Section 42316 of the California Health and Safety Code authorized the district to ord...
Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands v. United States Environmental Protection Agency
The Ninth Circuit, in an amended opinion, denied an environmental group's petition challenging EPA's decision to grant two air permits authorizing exploratory drilling operations in the Arctic Ocean by a drillship and its associated fleet of support vessels. The permits require the drillship to comp...
Village of Bald Head Island v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The Fourth Circuit upheld the dismissal of a town's complaint seeking to require the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to honor commitments the Corps made to it and other North Carolina towns when developing plans to widen, deepen, and realign portions of the Cape Fear River navigation channel. The town ...
Golden Gate Land Holdings, LLC v. East Bay Regional Park District
A California appellate court affirmed a lower court decision allowing a park district to go forward with its condemnation action to help complete a shoreline park and trail but ordering the district to prepare an environmental impact report under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The ...
Ladd v. United States
The Federal Circuit reversed the dismissal of landowners "rails to trails" takings claims against the government. The landowners alleged that the government's issuance of a Notice of Interim Trail Use or Abandonment (NITU) in 2006 constituted a compensable Fifth Amendment taking because it operated ...
Friends of the Earth v. United States Environmental Protection Agency
A district court held that EPA has no mandatory or nondiscretionary duty to make a determination as to whether lead emissions from general aviation aircraft engines using aviation gasoline endanger the public health or welfare under CAA §231(a)(2)(A). A finding that emissions cause or contribute to...
United States v. DTE Energy Co.
The Sixth Circuit held that the CAA does not categorically prevent EPA from challenging preconstruction projections of whether and to what extent emissions will increase following construction. The preconstruction projection determines whether the project constitutes a “major modification” and t...