The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court's grant of summary judgment in favor of DOI in water districts' lawsuit challenging the agency's management of California's Central Valley Project. The water districts argued that DOI should be ordered to provide the necessary drainage or, alternatively, to p...

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 ...

The Alaska Supreme Court held that neither the Alaska Constitution nor the Alaska Land Act require the state's natural resources agency to issue a written best interest finding at each step of an oil and gas development project. The Act's best interest finding requirement is purely a creature of the...

A district court dismissed as untimely Alaska's lawsuit challenging the 2001 roadless rule, which prohibits roadwork and timber harvesting on 58.5 million acres of national forest, including 14.7 million acres of the Tongass and Chugach National Forests in Alaska. Alaska's cause of action accrued in...

A district court held that individual ingredients of hydraulic fracturing formulas are trade secrets and do not need to be publicly disclosed. The Wyoming Public Records Act does not define trade secrets, but the Wyoming oil and gas commission's policy for evaluating trade secrets is reasonable and ...

A district court held that FLPMA §204(c), which allows Congress to block DOI withdrawals of new mining claims in excess of 5,000 acres through a resolution of both houses, is unconstitutional. In 2012, DOI withdrew more than one million acres of federal land from mining location and entry in northe...