A state high court affirmed a lower court denial of landowners' and an environmental group's petition to review a decision by the Iowa Utilities Board authorizing a company to use eminent domain to build a crude oil pipeline. The landowners and group argued the pipeline did not serve the "public con...

A district court dismissed a conservation group's suit to block the Department of Homeland Security from constructing a border wall near the National Butterfly Center in southern Texas. The group argued that the Department violated the Fourth Amendment by entering the Center without consent or warra...

The Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court's dismissal of a constitutional challenge to California's 2015 Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). Farming groups argued that the state's LCFS violated the Commerce Clause and the federal structure of the Constitution by regulating extraterritorially. But the...

A district court ruled unconstitutional an Iowa statute that criminalized undercover investigations of slaughterhouses and other animal facilities. Environmental groups argued that the state statute impermissibly restricted their free speech under the First Amendment because it was a content- and vi...

A district court temporarily stayed proceedings in which a pipeline developer sought access to a North Carolina farm for construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The landowner sought to stay the pipeline developer's attempt to acquire eminent domain rights to his property to allow pending challe...

A district court declared unconstitutional a California law that regulates the recording of conveyances of federal public lands in the state. DOJ argued that the state law, which grants the State Lands Commission the right of first refusal on transfers of federal public lands, runs afoul of the doct...

A district court ruled unconstitutional two Wyoming statutes that impose criminal and civil penalties for data collection on private land or public land accessed via private land. Environmental groups argued that the statutes violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The court found th...

A Minnesota appellate court affirmed a lower court ruling in favor of a county's zoning ordinance that bans all industrial-mineral mining, including silica-sand mining. A silica-sand mining company argued that the ordinance discriminated against its business. But the lower court disagreed, concludin...

A Federal Claims court held that the Surface Transportation Board (STB) temporarily took landowners' property without just compensation for use as an interim trail under the National Trails System Act. The landowners' predecessors-in-interest sold right-of-way easements to a railroad for operation o...

A district court dismissed an environmental group's lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Congressional Review Act (CRA), under which Congress recently passed a resolution disapproving an FWS rule that prohibited certain hunting and trapping practices on National Wildlife Refuges in Alask...