The Eighth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for a carbon dioxide pipeline company in a challenge to two Iowa county ordinances that regulate pipelines. The company, which wants to build an interstate pipeline through Iowa, argued the ordinances were preempted by the Pipeline Safety Act (PSA) and Io...
The D.C. Circuit denied environmental groups' challenges to FERC's decision to grant a company's request to extend its construction deadline for a 75-mile extension to the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The groups argued FERC's finding of "good cause" to grant the extension and its refusal to revisit its...
A district court reversed its prior dismissal of a challenge to four BLM leasing decisions concerning federal land in Utah. An environmental group had argued BLM violated NEPA and the ESA by failing to fully analyze the environmental, social, direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts of the lessees' ...
The U.S. Supreme Court, 8-0, held that the D.C. Circuit failed to afford the Surface Transportation Board the substantial deference NEPA requires in a challenge to the Board's authorization of a new 88-mile rail line in the Uinta Basin, and that the court incorrectly interpreted NEPA to require the ...
Tribes in the Pacific Northwest have faced persistent obstacles to their exercise of treaty fishing rights, most prominently illegal regulation of off-reservation fishing by state governments. As salmon decline, a new frontier is emerging for treaty right violations: environmental degradation. A recent court victory ruled that a series of culverts owned and operated by the state of Washington violated tribal treaty rights to fish for salmonids at their “usual and accustomed” places.