A district court granted summary judgment for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a challenge to its proposal to dredge a portion of a harbor located in the Lower St. Johns River. An environmental group argued that the Corps violated NEPA by failing to analyze the present effects of past dredging ac...
A district court granted summary judgment for the U.S. Forest Service in a challenge to its approval of a tree-thinning and fire mitigation project in the Los Padres National Forest. Conservation groups and nearby residents argued the Service's decision to authorize the project with a categorical ex...
The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and vacated in part summary judgment for DOI in a challenge to its issuance of secretarial procedures authorizing a Native American tribe to operate a hotel and casino in Madera, California. Nonprofit groups argued that issuance of the procedures violated NEPA and ...
A district court vacated 287 oil and gas leases that BLM issued on 145,000 acres of federal land in Montana. Environmental groups argued that the agency violated NEPA by failing to consider the leases' impacts on groundwater from shallow fracturing and surface casing depth. The court found that the ...
A district court vacated an EA and FONSI issued by the Forest Service approving a mining company to explore for gold on public lands near the Idaho-Montana border. Environmental groups previously argued before the court that the Forest Service failed to take a hard look at the impacts on groundwater...
A district court granted summary judgment to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in a challenge to the agency's decision to hold oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. Environmental groups argued that BOEM failed to evaluate a "true" no-action alternative in its EIS by assuming that...
Heralded in 1970 as the nation’s environmental Magna Carta, the National Environmental Policy Act’s (NEPA’s) luster seems faded and its future uncertain. While Trump Administration initiatives threaten to diminish further and perhaps even dismantle aspects of NEPA, this Article chronicles how the current assault merely continues NEPA’s unfortunate trajectory, examining how the courts, the U.S. Congress, and the executive branch each have whittled away at the Act. NEPA consequently sits at a critical juncture: it could soon fade away or it could hew back toward its original promise.
In an unpublished opinion, the Ninth Circuit held that the U.S. Forest Service's decision not to prepare an EIS for a tree-thinning project in Mount Hood National Forest was arbitrary and capricious. A district court concluded that the Service's decision was lawful and thus granted summary judgment ...
A district court denied summary judgment to environmental groups in a challenge to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' issuance of permits for construction of a crude oil pipeline across the Atchafalaya Basin. The groups argued that the Corps violated NEPA by failing to take a hard look at the risk of...