A district court dismissed the state of Alaska's lawsuit against the Federal Subsistence Board (FSB) regarding the Board's authorization of a subsistence hunt for a southeast Alaska tribe. Alaska argued the FSB violated the APA, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and the Sunshine A...
The First Circuit granted NOAA's motion to stay a district court order preliminarily enjoining the agency's partial seasonal closure of a Maine lobster fishery to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales. A fishing union had argued the closure was an arbitrary and capricious application of the...
A district court granted summary judgment for an environmental group in a challenge to FWS' decision not to list the Joshua tree as threatened under the ESA. The group challenged the Service's findings that Joshua trees were not threatened under either the five threat factors or throughout a signifi...
A district court granted the state of Louisiana's motion for preliminary injunction to delay the effective date of NMFS' 2019 rule requiring turtle excluder devices on certain skimmer trawl vessels operating in inshore waters. The state argued the effective date was arbitrary and capricious because ...
A district court granted interim injunctive relief for environmental groups in a lawsuit concerning the Army Corps of Engineers' operation of dams in the Willamette River Basin. The groups sought injunctive relief to remedy the Corps' substantive and procedural ESA violations previously found by the...
A state appellate court upheld the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission's (MPUC's) approval of affiliated-interest agreements for construction and operation of a natural gas-fired power plant in Wisconsin. Environmental groups argued substantial evidence did not support MPUC's determinations that t...
The D.C. Circuit granted in part and denied in part a challenge to FERC's orders addressing complaints over the results of a 2015 auction for electrical capacity in Illinois. A public interest group had complained the auction had resulted in electricity rates that were unjust and unreasonable, that ...
A district court denied a motion for preliminary injunction in a challenge to the National Park Service's (NPS') management practices for the tule elk population in an area of Point Reyes National Seashore. Plaintiffs argued the elk were dying from lack of adequate forage and water due to recent dro...
The Ninth Circuit upheld FERC's denial of an environmental group's motion to intervene in post-licensing deadline extension proceedings for a hydroelectric project in California. The group had argued that FERC violated Rule 214 of the Commission's regulations in denying intervention and §6 of the F...
A district court denied a nonprofit group's motion to preliminarily enjoin BLM from gathering wild horses inside and adjacent to the Onaqui Mountain Herd Management Area. The group argued BLM's 2018 decision to gather the horses over a period of 10 years violated the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Bur...