The Ninth Circuit held that the U.S. Forest Service's Angora Fire Restoration Project in the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (LTBMU) complies with the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and NEPA. Environmental groups argued that the NMFA required the Forest Service to demonstrate at the project ...

The Court held that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs) from new motor vehicles. The case arose after private organizations petitioned EPA to begin regulating four GHGs, including carbon dioxid (CO2), under the Clean Air Act....

The Tenth Circuit upheld the DOI Secretary's decision to rescind 77 oil and gas leases on federal land around national parks in Utah. BLM auctioned the oil and gas leases to energy companies in late 2008 during the last weeks of the George W. Bush administration. After the auction but before the lea...

A district court dismissed environmental groups' lawsuits challenging BLM's decision to authorize the leasing of certain public lands in northeastern Wyoming for coal mining operations. The groups, who claim that BLM failed to prepare an adequate EIS before authorizing the leasing of the tracts at i...

The Ninth Circuit held that the U.S. Forest Service's EIS for a forest thinning research project in the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest within the Deschutes National Forest complies with NEPA. The project allows logging and controlled burning on roughly 2,500 acres of the Forest to reduce the risk...

A district court held that a minor may bring a climate change lawsuit against the state of New Mexico under the public trust doctrine. The minor made a substantive allegation that, notwithstanding statutes enacted by the New Mexico legislature that enable the state to set air quality standards, the ...