A California appellate court upheld the issuance of a county permit for a landfill expansion project in the Suisun Marsh, part of the San Francisco Bay tidal estuary. Environmental groups claimed that the permit approvals violate the Sonoma County Local Protection Plan and, specifically, a county or...
A district court held that Minnesota's New Generation Energy Act, which establishes energy and environmental standards related to carbon dioxide emissions, constitutes impermissible extraterritorial legislation and is a per se violation of the dormant Commerce Clause. The statute's plain language ap...
A New Jersey appellate court held that the state's Department of Environmental Protection violated the New Jersey APA when it withdrew from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) program. In 2011, the state posted a notice on the Department's website that is was withdrawing from the RGGI prog...
A district court upheld the constitutionality of a New York county's solid waste flow control ordinance that directs all solid waste generated within the county to designated publicly owned but privately operated processing facilities. Solid waste companies alleged that, by preventing non-designated...
The Supreme Court of South Carolina reinstated an administrative law court (ALC) decision that reversed and denied a state agency's issuance of a permit for a construction and demolition landfill. The ALC denied the permit based on its conclusion that the region already had more landfill capacity th...
The Ninth Circuit refused to rehear a case in which it previously ruled that environmental groups lacked standing to compel the Washington State Department of Ecology and other regional agencies to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the state's five oil refineries under the CAA. One of the judge...
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 ...