A district court held that the Farm Service Agency and the Small Business Administration violated NEPA and the ESA when they guaranteed loans to a hog farm without adequately assessing the farm's environmental impact. The farm, which houses 6,500 swine, is located near a tributary of the Buffalo Nat...

The Ninth Circuit upheld a lower court decision dismissing an environmental group's citizen suit requesting EPA to issue more stringent regulations for ozone pollution under the PSD program. The group alleged that the EPA Administrator has a nondiscretionary duty to issue revised ozone regulations u...

A district court vacated and remanded the National Marine Fisheries Service's (NMFS') decision denying environmental and animal rights groups' petitions to list the porbeagle shark as endangered or threatened under the ESA. When NMFS receives a petition to list a species, it must make an initial fin...

The Ninth Circuit dismissed an environmental group's ESA and NEPA claims against FWS, the National Park Service (NPS), and the state of Montana in a case concerning the "helicopter hazing" of bison in Yellowstone National Park. To minimize disease transfer between wild bison and cattle in the Greate...

A district court held that the federal government may not regulate the take of the Utah prairie dog, a threatened species, on nonfederal lands under the ESA. In 2012, FWS issued a rule authorizing the take of the Utah prairie dog, via permit, on "agricultural lands, [private property] within [.5 mil...

The Ninth Circuit held that DOT did not violate the CAA or NEPA in its approval of a planned expressway connecting the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California. In the course of the project’s approval process, DOT conducted an air quality conformity determination under the CAA, which involv...