The Ninth Circuit dismissed an oil company's Declaratory Judgment Act lawsuit against several environmental groups, seeking a declaration that the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s approval of two oil spill response plans under OPA for Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas did not vi...

The D.C. Circuit upheld an NRC order transferring regulatory authority over decommissioning activities at a former aluminum production plant to the state of New Jersey under the Atomic Energy Act. New Jersey’s regulatory regime is adequate and compatible with the NRC’s regulatory program. And de...

A district court granted in part and denied in part motions for summary judgment in a case involving logging projects in the Flathead National Forest. In the case, environmental groups challenged the Forest Service's and FWS' authorization of the Glacier Loon Fuels Reduction and Forest Health Projec...

A Colorado court held that a voter-approved local ban on hydraulic fracturing cannot apply retroactively to ban oil and gas operations that a city approved in a prior agreement. The city entered into a memorandum of understanding in August 2013 allowing a company to engage oil and gas exploration an...

A district court dismissed Nebraska's lawsuit challenging EPA's proposed standards to limit carbon dioxide emissions from new or modified fossil fuel-fired electric utility generating units. As part of the proposed rule, EPA found that certain technology was "adequately demonstrated" for purposes of...

The Ninth Circuit invalidated a California law that prescribes cleanup standards for radioactive contamination at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a former federal nuclear testing facility near Los Angeles. The law, Senate Bill 990, requires that the site be made suitable for subsistence farming, ...

A district court upheld the National Park Service's (NPS') plan to allow off-road vehicle (ORV) use on designated trails in the "addition lands" of Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve. In 1988, Congress authorized the acquisition of what is referred to as the "addition lands," consisting of appr...

A district court upheld DOI's decision to withdraw more than one million acres of federal land adjacent to the Grand Canyon National Park from uranium mining. The withdrawal will close these lands to the exploration and development of uranium mining claims for 20 years, although mining of a few exis...