The Court holds that state sovereign immunity bars the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) from adjudicating a private party's complaint against a nonconsenting state. A cruise line offering gambling cruises sued the South Carolina State Ports Authority (SCSPA) for denying the cruise line's five appli...

The Court holds that a New York town's ordinance requiring all solid waste to be processed at a designated transfer station before leaving the town violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The avowed purpose of the ordinance is to retain the processing fees charged at the transfer stat...

The court holds that a New Jersey landowner adequately stated a substantive due process claim under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when he alleged that a local zoning board arbitrarily or irrationally decided that the operation of a battery distribution business on his property vi...

The court holds that Wyoming hunting license regulations do not violate the Takings and Equal Protection Clauses of the U.S. Constitution. The regulations create separate pools for allocating licenses to residents and nonresidents and limit owners of 160 or more acres to two supplemental licenses. T...

The court denies the federal government's motion for summary judgment in a case where a farmer alleged that the government took his property without just compensation by ordering the farmer to cease operation of a drainage system and restore his property to its prior condition as wetlands. The court...

The Court holds that the issue of liability in a developer's regulatory takings claim against a city was properly submitted to a jury. After the city imposed more rigorous demands each time it denied five proposals to develop a 37.6-acre oceanfront parcel in Monterey, California, the developer filed...

The court holds that cemetery owners' takings claims arising from their failure to obtain a Clean Water Act (CWA) §404 permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are not ripe for review. In 1983, the property owners applied for a CWA §404 permit to dredge and fill 50 acres of the property, which...

The court holds that a state land use board decision precludes property owners from obtaining federal court relief of their takings claim under the U.S. Constitution. The landowners were prevented from building on their land due to an Oregon State law permitting dwellings to be built in forest use z...

The court holds that an interstate radioactive waste commission can sue a member state for violating the good-faith provisions of a radioactive waste compact. The court first holds that the Eleventh Amendment does not bar the commission's suit against the state. Congress has the plenary power to att...

The Tenth Circuit held that an Oklahoma city and a Texas city that entered into water contracts with one another lack standing to challenge Oklahoma's water appropriation permitting process as unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause. The claims at issue here are based on a substantive provisi...