The Ninth Circuit held that ESA §§7 and 9, as applied to the California delta smelt, do not violate the Commerce Clause. In 2008, the FWS issued a biological opinion (BiOp) to the Bureau of Reclamation concerning two federal and state water diversion projects in California's Central Valley...

The Ninth Circuit upheld, on statutory and constitutional grounds, California's vessel fuel rules as they apply to vessels located more than three miles off the California coast. The rules, which seek to reduce air pollutants affecting the state of California, require ocean-going vessels to ...

The Ninth Circuit vacated and remanded DOE's energy transmission congestion study and national interest electric transmission (NIET) corridor designations prepared under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct). The EPAct added §216 to the Federal Power Act, requiring DOE to prepare the conges...

The Fifth Circuit held that a "farmout agreement," under which the owner of a federal offshore oil and gas lease transferred its rights to drill to another drilling operator, does not require the operator to bear a proportionate share of the costs of decommissioning an oil platform at the le...