The court holds that a Colorado statute that exempts from taxation certain possessory interests in tax-exempt property violates the state constitution. A ski area operator, whose ski resort is located on federal land, filed suit challenging the appraisal of its owed taxes on the basis that taxation ...

The court vacates and remands a district court's order issued after an Endangered Species Act case brought by an environmental group against a lumber company had been declared moot. The district court granted the lumber company's motion to dismiss the case as moot but then issued an opinion outlinin...

The court grants Illinois' request to remand to state court its case against the U.S. Department of the Army (Army) for improperly releasing pollutants from its Joliet Army Ammunition Plant into waste streams and outfalls that ultimately ended up in Prairie Creek, a tributary of the Kankakee River. ...

The court affirms a district court decision that municipal liens placed on individuals' property did not constitute a taking or violate the individuals' due process rights. In 1992, and again in 1993, a town imposed municipal liens on the property for municipal improvement. In 1999, the individuals ...

The court rejects the use of the practicably irrigable acreage (PIA) test as the exclusive quantification measure for determining water rights on Native American reservations and instead creates a new list of factors to be considered in determining reserved water amounts. Under Winters v. United Sta...

The court denies an environmental remediation specialist's claims that a port commission owed it money for cleaning up property leased by the commission. A chemical manufacturer leased land from the port commission. Upon discovering contamination on the property, the manufacturer hired the environme...

The court affirms a district court holding that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS') failure to prepare a programmatic environmental impact statement (EIS) before approving land and water rights purchases under §206 of the Truckee-Carson Pyramid Lake Water Rights Settlement Act (Settlement A...

The court reverses a district court's blanket equitable exemption of intra-farm transfers from Nevada's law of forfeiture and abandonment and holds that equity may be appropriate only in the forfeiture context under certain circumstances. In a prolonged litigation regarding water rights from the Tru...

The court reverses a district court decision holding that an environmental group's claims against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for failing to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or the Endangered Species Act (ESA) before issuing a road easement are not ripe. Although DOE ...

The court holds that a trial court improperly stayed proceedings in which Native American tribes sought damages from the United States for failure to manage certain tribal lands. The court first holds that the reason for the stay—the need to quiet title to the tribal lands before the case can proc...