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...

The Arizona Supreme Court vacated a ruling that a Native American tribe sufficiently alleged standing to bring a public nuisance claim against a resort using reclaimed wastewater to make artificial snow on the San Francisco Peaks in northern Arizona. Before the lower court, the tribe argued that the...

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...

A Texas court, ruling on a petition for pre-suit discovery, held that it would have jurisdiction over a major oil corporation's potential lawsuit against several California cities that have filed suit against it relating to climate change. The company's potential claims would allege, among other thi...

The Federal Circuit held that the U.S. government is not liable for flood damages that property owners in the New Orleans area incurred following Hurricane Katrina. The property owners filed suit under the Tucker Act, alleging that the government's construction and operation of the Mississippi River...