A district court vacated FWS' designation of land in California as critical habitat for the endangered Riverside fairy shrimp. Property owners argued that the agency improperly designated 56 acres of land as "occupied" habitat even though the shrimp species live only in the adjacent one-acre stock p...

A district court denied Colorado's and Utah's request to vacate FWS' decision to list the Gunnison sage grouse species as threatened under the ESA. The states argued that many of the agency's claimed threats to the species were unsupported by science, and that its determinations were arbitrary and c...

A district court ruled in favor of fishermen's challenge to NMFS regulations regarding offshore aquaculture in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The fishermen argued that the regulations were facially invalid because they fall outside the agency's authority to regulate fisheries under the Magnus...

A district court denied commercial fishing groups' request to preliminarily enjoin development of a wind energy facility off the coast of New York. The groups argued that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) violated NEPA when it issued a lease to the company by improperly segmenting the ana...

The Sixth Circuit held that seepage from a coal-fired power plant adjacent to the Cumberland River did not violate the CWA. Environmental groups argued that the plant violated the CWA by leaking pollutants without a permit from its unlined coal ash ponds into groundwater that is hydrologically conne...

The Sixth Circuit held that seepage from a coal-fired power plant that reached a nearby lake violated RCRA, but not the CWA. Environmental groups argued that the chemicals being stored in coal ash ponds contaminated the surrounding groundwater, which in turn contaminated a nearby lake, in violation ...