A district court granted in part and denied in part the motion of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to dismiss a mine operator’s action relating to the MSHA’s use of a citation quota, which allegedly caused mine inspectors to issue baseless citations to the operator. As a prelimin...
A district court allowed negligence claims against the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to continue in seven lawsuits stemming from a coal-ash spill, but it held that the TVA is not subject to punitive damages. Plaintiffs filed four class action complaints and four non-class action complaints seekin...
The Ninth Circuit, in a memorandum opinion, ruled that the Minerals Management Service (MMS) complied with NEPA and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) in approving oil companies' plans for exploratory drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, Alaska. Petitioners claimed that there are mu...
The Fifth Circuit vacated the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC's) decision that two natural gas pipelines perform a "transportation" function rather than a "gathering" function, thereby subjecting them to FERC jurisdiction's under the Natural Gas Act. Natural gas flows from gathering pip...
The court holds that a lower court erred in preliminarily enjoining a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rule that permits the resumption of the importation of Canadian cattle to the United States. The importation of Canadian cattle had temporarily been barred due to fears of Bovine Spongiform En...
The court dismisses in part and denies in part a petition for judicial review of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's decision to allow an owner and operator of a hydroelectric project on the Sebasticook River in Maine to surrender its license and breach a dam. Nearby landowners complained tha...
The court dismisses an environmental group's petition for review of seven Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) orders concerning a natural gas pipeline extension from Virginia to North Carolina. The group lacked standing to assert its claim that the natural gas company's route realignments we...
The court dismisses an environmental group's claims that the National Park Service (NPS) failed to comply with certain statutory mandates, deadlines, and management policies involving national park management, and denied the group's non-statutory claim that the NPS failed to develop wilderness manag...
The court holds that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) did not violate the Privacy Act by disclosing an individual's personal information on its public website. The Corps posted the information to defend itself from media inquiries stemming from a newspaper article that was critical of th...
A court holds that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) violated the Energy Policy Act in refusing to require large private and municipal fleets of motor vehicles to use alternative fuel vehicles. The Energy Policy Act, which was designed to reduce air pollution, global warming, and U.S. dependence o...