Juliana v. United States
A district court granted a group of youths' motion for leave to file a second amended complaint in a lawsuit alleging the U.S. government failed to act on climate change and violated their right to a safe climate. The youths had argued that the government violated their constitutional rights under t...
Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics v. United States Forest Service
A district court granted in part and denied in part an environmental group's motion for summary judgment in a CWA citizen suit concerning the Forest Service's discharge of aerially deployed fire retardant into navigable waters of the United States without an NPDES permit. The group argued the Servic...
Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council v. Environmental Protection Agency
The D.C. Circuit dismissed industry groups' petitions to review EPA's decision not to reconsider its 2009 finding that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from motor vehicles contribute to climate change and thus endanger public health and welfare. The groups initially petitioned EPA to reconsider its fi...
Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency
The U.S. Supreme Court held that the CWA extends to only those "wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are 'waters of the United States' in their own right," such that they are indistinguishable from those waters, in a challenge to an EPA compliance order stating that landowner...
Climate Compliance Versus Action 2023
The Inflation Reduction Act and Federal Buy Clean Initiative have each inspired states and municipalities to regulate embodied carbon (Scope 3) using “Buy Clean” policies and legislation. Reducing embodied carbon has become mainstream, and environmental product declarations (EPDs) have surfaced as the tool. Are EPDs alone enough? Is the compliance timeline sufficient? On February 1, 2023, the Environmental Law Institute hosted a panel of experts that provided an update on Buy Clean policy, green funding, the status of carbon emissions, and a primer on EPDs.