Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility v. Beaudreau
A district court largely upheld several administrative decisions made by federal agencies approving the construction of various aspects of an offshore wind energy project in Nantucket Sound, remanding only two issues to FWS and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for ESA violations. Four gr...
Century Exploration New Orleans LLC v. United States
The Federal Circuit held that the U.S. government did not breach its contract with two oil and gas exploration companies when it imposed new regulatory requirements after their lease went into effect. The companies jointly leased the mineral rights to land on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) from t...
WildEarth Guardians v. McCarthy
A district court dismissed an environmental group's CAA citizens suit against EPA for failing to make a finding that Idaho and Utah failed to timely submit SIPs for fine particulate matter (PM2.5). In 2007, EPA issued a rule that required states to submit their SIPs for PM2.5 within three years afte...
Powder River Basin Resource Council v. Wyoming Oil & Gas Conservation Commission
The Supreme Court of Wyoming reversed and remanded a lower court decision affirming the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission's denial of a request for public records documenting the identities of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations in the state. Below, the environmental groups t...
Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency
The D.C. Circuit denied an electric utility association's petition for review challenging EPA's new source performance standards for steam generating units. The standards—issued via final rules in 2009 and again in 2012—exempt all units using particulate matter continuous emissions monitoring sy...