The court held that the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) environmental assessment (EA) for a logging project in Oregon violated the National Environmental Policy Act and that the lower court erred in dismissing the case as moot. Although the harvested trees cannot be restored, harm to old gro...

The court held that it lacked appellate jurisdiction over a lower court's partial grant of summary judgment in favor of the parent company of a chemical plant in Bhopal, India, that allegedly caused soil and groundwater contamination. Property owners and residents near the plant sought monetary and ...

The court dismissed environmental organizations' claims that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) failed to conduct the environmental and historical assessments required by the National Environmental Polic...

The Court reversed the Fourth Circuit's grant of summary judgment in favor of a coal-fired power plant operator charged with violating the Clean Air Act's (CAA's) prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) regulations. The CAA's PSD and new source performance standards (NSPS) provisions both cove...

The Seventh Circuit upheld the dismissal of landowners' takings claim against a city for allowing their land to become flooded due to city-owned stormwater detention ponds and a wastewater treatment facility. The flooding transformed their land from farmland to wetlands. The landowners filed an inve...

The Second Circuit upheld the dismissal of rescue, search, and cleanup workers' substantive due process complaint against federal officials for knowingly issuing false statements about air quality safety in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks of the World Trade Center. The wor...

The Ninth Circuit vacated a lower court decision granting in part and denying in part cross-motions for summary judgment in a case concerning the validity of the federal government's policy for listing killer whales under the Endangered Species Act. Since the lower court issued its decision, the Nat...

The Eighth Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the U.S. Department of Transportation on a city's claims that the agency insufficiently considered the economic and environmental impact of a sound wall in violation of the National Environmental Policy Ac...

The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision that the Clean Air Act (CAA) does not preempt certain provisions of local "fleet rules" requiring operators to meet specified emission standards or engine requirements, but reversed and remanded the court's refusal to consider whether the CAA preempt...

A district court dismissed environmental groups' claims that emergency orders issued by the state of Louisiana following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita conflict with and/or are preempted by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), and the Clean Air Act (CAA). The or...