The court affirms in part and vacates in part a district court order requiring the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to disclose to Maine certain documents relating to efforts to list Atlantic salmon in eight rivers in Maine as endangered. Although the district court allowed DOI to withhold many...

The court vacates a district court order granting a permanent injunction restraining environmental groups and the government from interfering with the construction or operation of a multi-site hog production facility on tribal trust land. In 1998, a Native American tribe and a company agreed to nego...

The court holds that a Vermont Environmental Board Act 250 (Act 250) permit that restricted truck travel through a village does not violate the U.S. Commerce Clause or the Supremacy Clause. A company whose goods were transported through the village challenged the board's application of Act 250 argui...

The court holds that the U.S. Forest Service (Forest Service) violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Rescissions Act by reissuing a permit for livestock grazing in the Gallatin National Forest without first conducting a NEPA review. In 1994, the Forest Service implemented a po...

The court vacates a district court decision dismissing the United States' suit to quiet title to water rights in a portion of the Rio Grande River. The dispute centers around the Rio Grande Reclamation Project, and after several attempts to dismiss water adjudications in state court, the United Stat...

The court holds that a contractor's recovery of attorney fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) is barred by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Department of Health & Human Resources, 532 U.S. 598 (2001). The contractor origina...

The court holds that an electric utility need not reveal to the federal government calculations and analyses of the utility's emissions that its scientist and attorneys prepared in response to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suit filed against it for allegedly violating the Clean Air Act's (C...

The court reverses a district court decision that a property owner could not recover response costs under the Pennsylvania Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act (HSCA) because he failed to establish a release or threat of release of hazardous substances. A town previously used the property as a landfill, and ...

The court affirms the U.S. Court of Federal Claims' holding that the passage of the Resolution of Western Lands Dispute Act did not effect a taking of a railroad's land. When the railroad was incorporated in 1866, it was granted large areas of public land by the U.S. government. In exchange for the ...

The court approves a district court award of damages to an individual who was diagnosed with reactive airways dysfunction syndrome (RADS) after inhaling cement fumes. The court first holds that the expert testimony offered by the individual was sufficient for a reasonable jury to find that the indiv...