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Illinois Clean Energy Community Found. v. Filan

The Seventh Circuit held that the state of Illinois would be violating the U.S. Constitution if it confiscated any part of a clean energy foundation's assets. After the state legislature passed an authorizing statute, the foundation was created out of the profits from a private company's sale of sev...

Riverdale Mills Corp. v. Pimpare

The Fourth Circuit held that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency inspectors who took wastewater samples at a mill are entitled to qualified immunity. The owner of the mill had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the wastewater under the circumstances shown in the record and therefore had no Fou...

Beentjes v. Placer County Air Pollution Control Dist.

The Ninth Circuit held that California's air pollution control districts are not arms of the state and therefore are not entitled to sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment. To determine whether an entity is an arm of the state, the Ninth Circuit uses a five-point test that looks at whether ...

Stearns Co., Ltd. v. United States

The Federal Circuit reversed a lower court decision that the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) produced a physical taking of a company's mineral rights. In 1937, the company sold the surface rights of land in the Daniel Boone National Forest to the United States but it retained the ...

Walker v. Mesquite, Tex., City of

The Fifth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of residents' lawsuit against the Dallas Housing Authority seeking to enjoin it from constructing public housing in their community. The decision to build does not violate the residents' right to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. The authority ...

MacKenzie v. San Marcos, City of

A district court dismissed property owners' takings, substantive due process, and equal protection claims against a city after the city denied the owners' request for building permits. The owners' takings claim was dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The owners did not adequately seek...

Oregon Waste Sys., Inc. v. Department of Envtl. Quality

The Court rules that the state of Oregon's imposition of a surcharge on the in-state disposal of solid waste generated in other states that is nearly three times that imposed on the disposal of waste generated within Oregon violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Oregon imposed a $2.5...

O'Conner v. Commonwealth Edison Co.

The court holds that a nuclear facility employee's state suit for damages based on personal injury allegedly caused by exposure to unsafe dosages of radiation was constitutionally removed to federal court under the Price-Anderson Amendments Act (PAAA), and that retroactive application of the PAAA di...

Alliance for Clean Coal v. Craig

The court holds that the Illinois Coal Act violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Act requires public utilities to devise Clean Air Act (CAA) compliance plans and present them to the Illinois Commerce Commission for approval. The Act requires the utilities and the Commission to t...

Stevens v. Cannon Beach, City of

The court holds that the denial by an Oregon city and the Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation (Department) of oceanfront property owners' permit application to construct a seawall in the dry sand area of their property does not constitute an uncompensated taking under the Fifth Amendment to th...