The Fifth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision dismissing a lawsuit filed by 11 Louisiana parishes in which they sought penalties under the Louisiana Wildlife Protection Statute for the pollution-related loss of aquatic life and wildlife following the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the ...
Massachusetts' highest court upheld the state's "priority habitat" regulations insofar as they allow the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife to designate priority habitat without affording landowners the procedural protections statutorily due to those owning property within "significant...
The Ninth Circuit upheld the dismissal of activists' lawsuit challenging the construction of a 20-mile, high-speed rail project in Honolulu, Hawaii. The activists claimed that DOT, the Federal Transit Administration, and the city violated NEPA and §4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act (DOT ...
A Michigan appellate court held that Mich. Admin. Rule 324.102(x), which defines the term “injection well,” does not include wells completed using hydraulic fracturing. Accordingly, "frack" wells are not subject to the environmental regulations applicable to injection wells. For a well to be cat...
A district court held that a Nebraska law passed in 2012 to expedite the approval of a new route for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline through the state is unconstitutional. Article IV, §20, of the Nebraska Constitution commits exclusively to the Nebraska Public Service Commission (PSC) the au...
The Supreme Court of Missouri reversed and remanded a lower court decision that a proposed ordinance that would impose additional sales taxes to pay for a light rail system in Kansas City, Missouri, violates the state constitution. The case arose after a community activist sought to place the ordina...
The Seventh Circuit held that a lower court should have awarded a real estate firm double damages for harm caused by an oil company during its attempt to clean up pollution at gas stations in Michigan the firm leased to it. The firm filed a breach of contract claim and a waste claim for eight sites ...
A district court held that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) violated NEPA and the ESA in approving certain operations at a fish hatchery on Oregon's Sandy River. NMFS regulations provide an exemption for the otherwise unlawful take of anadromous fish caused by a hatchery's artificial pro...
A district court denied environmental groups' motions for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to halt the Idaho Department of Fish and Game's wolf trapping and hunting program in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness area. Since December 2013, seven gray wolves have bee...
The Ninth Circuit held that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's (BOEM's) EIS analyzing the environmental effects of proposed oil and gas development leases in the Chukchi Sea of the northwest coast of Alaska violated NEPA. Although the EIS properly took account of incomplete or unavailable infor...