The court reverses a district court decision that the New Mexico Forest Conservation Act (FCA) preempted a county timber harvest ordinance and that the ordinance's environmental assessment provision included an invalid delegation of unlimited power to the county and zoning commission. The court firs...

The court affirms a district court decision that a county's denial of a company's permit application to operate a landfill on its property was not a taking under state law and did not violate the U.S. Commerce Clause or the Sherman Antitrust Act. The court first holds that the company did not meet t...

The court holds that two U.S. Forest Service (Forest Service) timber sales in the Boise National Forest in Idaho violated the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Environmental groups brought suit against the Forest Service seeking to enjoin the sal...

The court holds that it must abstain from hearing a case brought by property owners who claimed that a county ordinance making the lake on which their property sits a "no wake" lake is invalid under the Michigan Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act (NREPA) and constitutes a taking in v...

The court dismisses several tort and contract claims that a hazardous waste site remediation company brought against the trustees of an Indiana Superfund site and two companies that performed environmental services at the site, but allows the remediation company to continue with its unjust enrichmen...

The court holds that a local planning commission violated property owners' Fifth Amendment rights by vacating a restrictive covenant in their neighborhood for a private purpose. The commission vacated the covenant, which restricted development to single-family homes, in order to allow a developer to...

The court reverses a district court dismissal of two counts of an environmental group's suit alleging that five U.S. Forest Service (Forest Service) timber sales in the Payette National Forest in Idaho violate the National Forest Management Act (NFMA). The two dismissed counts alleged that the Fores...

The court denies manufacturers' motions to dismiss property owners' common-law claims against them for allegedly contaminating the owners' land. The manufacturers argued that the property owners' claims were time barred under New York law. Under state law, the property owners had either three years ...

The court holds that the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) did not violate the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) when it authorized and issued a finding of no significant impact for the taking of land into trust for a California Native American t...

The court holds that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS') final supplemental environmental impact statement (FSEIS) for its program to control the population of sea lampreys in Lake Champlain and its tributaries was adequate. In addition to employing physical barriers and trapping to reduce a...