The court holds that the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2002 preempts a city's regulatory efforts to provide safety oversight of a hazardous liquid pipeline within city boundaries. After a section of a hazardous liquid pipeline exploded in Seattle, Washington, the city refused to renew the pipel...

The court holds that municipal flow control ordinances do not violate the dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The municipal scheme at issue requires that the garbage generated by local households and businesses be delivered to facilities that are owned and operated by a public corporat...

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...

The court upholds the dismissal of state misdemeanor trespass and littering claims against a federal officer and contractor involved in the federal reintroduction of wolves in Wyoming. The officer and contractor were charged with the misdemeanors after they unknowingly entered private property in th...

A court holds that a county did not effect a physical or regulatory taking when it imposed conditions on a landowner's permit to activate a well on its property. The conditional use permit limited the landowner from extracting no more than 12,000 acre/feet per year of water from the aquifer underlyi...

The court vacates a lower court decision finding that the United States is not liable to a mining company for the alleged permanent physical taking of its leasehold interest in a 158-acre tract of land in Michigan. The takings claim arose after a landfill north of the company's plant was placed on t...

The court upheld the Atomic Safety Licensing Board's dismissal of environmental groups' intervention in early site permit proceedings for new nuclear power facilities in Clinton, Illinois. The groups contended, among other things, that the applicant failed to adequately consider energy efficiency or...

The court upheld a lower court decision dismissing residents' takings claim against a city for the dewatering of their water wells in the 1990s. Their takings claim based on past violations was barred by the statute of limitations because it was delinquently filed in federal court. Meanwhile, their ...

The Seventh Circuit upheld the dismissal of landowners' takings claim against a city for allowing their land to become flooded due to city-owned stormwater detention ponds and a wastewater treatment facility. The flooding transformed their land from farmland to wetlands. The landowners filed an inve...

The Second Circuit upheld the dismissal of rescue, search, and cleanup workers' substantive due process complaint against federal officials for knowingly issuing false statements about air quality safety in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks of the World Trade Center. The wor...